


Space Trash

by virtueofvice



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Drugs, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Incest, Incest, Older Man/Younger Woman, Smut, Substitution, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:13:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueofvice/pseuds/virtueofvice
Summary: Space trash: objects remaining in space though they no longer serve any useful purpose.Just some absolute shameless garbage featuring everyone's favorite alcoholic mad scientist reprobate and his favorite redheaded sidekick. A series of generally unrelated one-shots, liberally steeped in sin.Playlists:https://8tracks.com/virtueofvice/n-o-t-_-t-o-d-a-yhttps://8tracks.com/virtueofvice/space_trashhttps://8tracks.com/virtueofvice/i-always-thought-i-was-the-good-guy





	1. Girls In Science

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick has his reasons for preferring the little brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls… Three things happen when they are in the lab… You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.” - Tim Hunt, disgraced Nobel Laureate

He'd always known it was a statistical possibility. In a small world growing bigger, increasingly characterized by the chaotic and absurd, science at least remained reliable.

Summer was the accident, the fork in the road at which all sunny paths diverged and headed for dreary suburban drudgery. Neglected by her parents, avoided by her younger brother, held in lofty contempt by the mad genius who had only recently rejoined the family and claimed to be her grandfather. Her caustic adolescent detachment and preoccupation with the mundane shielded her from the slings and arrows of her family's disregard and the casual disdain of her schoolmates.

She was different; in some small, minute ways. Her mind held the drive to compete, whereas the Summer of C-137 - the Summer he had left behind, the Summer he preferred to forget - had been more relaxed in her intellectual pursuits. She possessed a sharp, biting wit that at times surprised even him with its dry, adult edge. She was, in many ways, more like him. Too much like him.

He preferred Morty's company. The benefit of the boy's simple, steady brainwaves aside; there was nothing distracting about the grandson that had accompanied him from their previous dimension. Everything about him seemed more real, his lines cleanly drawn, his expression trusting even in Rick's most untrustworthy moments. Morty was pure, an empty vessel only lately sullied by his company; a little cracked, still usable.

Summer's cracks ran deeper. Some had been there even before he arrived; rattled into her porcelain-armor exterior by the tremors of her parents' disintegrating marriage, prised open by the scorn and nastiness of the average high school girls she competed with for position and social currency. Rick was above the pettiness of her pursuits, but he noticed their aftermath. Noticed _her_.

She jockeyed for position in his workshop, as well - in his spaceship, in his life; pushing Morty out of the way with less than subtle aggression. It was only natural. Sibling rivalry was the very foundation of the coming-of-age experience in an American household. A perfectly healthy specimen of the human female in its teenage formative years - physically fit, emotionally tumultuous, and flooded with hormones. Rejected by her peers, with her designated paternal figure the lowest man on the totem pole; it was only natural she would seek out attention from the most authoritative male figure in the household.

Only natural.

_Natural._

Like the thin line of sweat trickling down her neck, rolling lazily over her collarbone, and disappearing beneath the line of her pink tank top when the cooling system in his ship quit. Like the savage way he slammed his fist down on the systems panel, suddenly irrationally furious at the technical failure, the vehicle and everything in it. His eyeballs suddenly burned with a dry heat, his mouth parched, and he ached for a drink. He licked his lips subconsciously, and Summer shifted in her seat, crossing her legs.

_Natural._

Like the russet red of her hair in the setting sun when she angrily stood in the driveway, arms akimbo on gently flaring hips, refusing to move until he consented to take her along on his latest adventure - and to let her ride shotgun, Morty languishing in the backseat.

_Natural._

Like the aroma of her perfume; strawberries and citrus, lingering in his workshop though she swore she hadn't trespassed all afternoon. The drifting, hazy summer scent made his head feel light and drew the focus from his eyes, pulling his gaze from the project on his workbench to somewhere beyond the pinkish suburban horizon. He grimaced, throwing his tools down in disgust, taking a long pull from his flask.

"G- Rick?" She queried, deliberately dropping the patriarchal honorific as she poked her head into the garage, feathered ends of her auburn ponytail brushing her delicate collarbone.

_...largest stadium covered end to end with naked redheads..._

He said nothing, merely rotated in his chair and took another swig from his flask, raising a frosty brow.

Indomitable, Summer took that as an invitation to slink in, something in her confident, almost defiant movements indefinably yet undeniably Sanchez. "Can you help me with my chemistry homework?"

"A-and why would I wanna waste my time - why would I want to do that, Summer?" He queried scathingly, twisting the lid onto the flask with practiced fingers and tucking it away. "The boring D-grade science they teach in your school couldn't stir up a teaspoon's worth of intellectual curiosity- ugh."

She paused, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, toe of her canvas shoe kicking at the cement. Something low and buried at the bottom of his brain woke belatedly from slumber and cried danger as she raised her eyes to his again. "Teach me something I don't know, then."

Rick swallowed, turned back to his workbench; rising from his chair with a heavy sigh. Crossing the garage to Summer, he was acutely aware of the humming of the fluorescent lights overhead, the balmy breeze from the open garage door; the distant squeal of a child playing (presumably) on the next block over. He invaded her space, one hand splayed against the door behind her, pressing it shut, resting against the wood near her waist so she could not slip away. The other braced on the wall beside her head, accentuating the way he loomed over her as he glared down at the girl.

Summer quailed slightly, her back to the door, the scent of single-malt scotch and crackling ozone putting her on uneven footing. "G-... Rick?"

"Don't ask for lessons you're not ready to learn, Summer." He drawled darkly, hand finding the doorknob and twisting sharply. The door opened and the girl stumbled back several steps. "Get out, I have shit to do." The door snapped shut again and Summer stood on the other side, biting her lip, cheeks flushed.

In the garage, Rick stood motionless, watching the door, drinking as night fell outside.

_Natural._


	2. Summer Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick returns to discover intruders in his garage. The culprit is appropriately chastised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Science is not only a disciple of reason but, also, one of romance and passion." - Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist

The brilliant swirling emerald; once such a thing of wonder, now more ordinary than the glowing red-yellow-green of a traffic light, blew out of existence behind him with a sound like a great sigh. The noise was loud enough to alert someone in the house to his presence, at least during the daylit hours, but it seemed he was alone in the pseudo-colonial post-updated-whatever crackerbox.

Or at least, it seemed that way, till he began to traverse the hallway towards his garage, bottle of the excellent high-proof liquor he'd gone to obtain the next system over in one hand. Cocking his head, he twisted the cap off the flagon, took a long swallow and listened with mild interest. The walls really were paper-thin in this place.

 _Morty jacking off._ He concluded after a moment and barged in, the door thumping quietly against the drywall behind it. 

The sight that greeted his eyes was, surprisingly,  _not_  Morty jacking off. Summer was spread atop his workbench like an offering, small thatch of ginger curls showing below her belly - perfect with its little bit of softness that she hated and the sprinkling of freckles he secretly -  _fuck,_ **so secretly** \- lusted after with the precise focus of cold grey eyes. She failed to notice Rick, however - indeed, seemed rather preoccupied; with one hand fisted in the platinum blond hair and the other awkwardly rubbing the blessedly not-visible-from-the-doorway cock of the teenage boy slobbering his way down her body. Summer had her eyes shut tight and was biting her lip, and seemed to be trying very hard to pretend that her beau was literally anyone else. It was the boy making all the racket, mewling like a pup at her inexpert ministrations. Small wonder she'd waited till the house was empty. 

Rick leaned against the door, crossing his arms and watching the pair with insolent insouciance. When the boy knelt between her legs, his attention perked up, but though Summer gripped his flaxen locks hard and bucked into his touch, the kid gave her only a few small, perfunctory laps with the tip of his tongue before standing and fumbling with his zipper and Y-fronts. 

Rolling his eyes, Rick cleared his throat; and at last Summer's eyes flew to his. She gave a little shriek and then choked on her next intake of breath as she tried to gasp; Rick remained standing with his arms crossed, watching impassively. She hopped down off his workbench and tugged on her t-shirt; tears smarting at the corners of her eyes, but she swallowed them down and swatted the denim-clad leg of her flavor-of-the-week to make himself presentable as she tugged on her panties. 

"Grandpa Rick, this is just... Dick," she said awkwardly, tugging the faded band tee down over her toned thighs. 

Rick refused to let his gaze trace the movement and raised an eyebrow. "I can see that."

"No, I mean-"

"Actually I prefer Rich," the lad said gamely, straightening after he adjusted his zipper. 

Rick chuckled. "Well,  _Rich,_ I'm Summer's Grandpa Rick, and this is my workshop you were ineptly fucking her in."

Watching the seconds tick by, Rick watched the teen glance from him, to Summer, back to him again, and watched the moment when he started to wonder about more than he needed to know.

"Hey..."

"Ugh." Barely glancing at him, Rick pulled a slender, blue-and-chrome cylinder from his lab coat. Summer recognized it a split second before blinding white light filled the garage and covered her eyes with a curse.

"Go home." Rick commanded the younger Richard. "Y-you came here looking for your bike, somebody stole it and you were asking around. You don't know my granddaughter. When you get home your bike will turn up - or it won't, I actually don't know if you have a bike and I don't care just get out." Already bored and impatient, profoundly aware of Summer's warmth hovering at his elbow, he opened the garage, physically pushed the memory-wiped boy out onto the sidewalk, and shut the door.

Turning to Summer, he growled, "What the fuck was that, Summer?"

Summer huffed and threw her arms up, all loose limbs and finely tuned teenage sense of injustice. "I was trying to get off, obviously." She snapped, false bravado lending her eyes a manic light, manicured hand on one lace-edged hip as if she hadn't just had the dick of a kid with her grandfather's name wrapped tightly in those same fingers five minutes before.

"Well did you?" Rick asked slyly, taking a pull from the bottle he still held.

"...What?" Doe eyes, liquid and tremorous; nubile frame poised to run but fascinated still.

"Did. You. Get. Off.  _Summer?"_

"I- ...No." Suddenly it was hard to breathe, her senses full of Rick, her bottom somehow edged back up onto the workbench where she'd been, a strange sort of deja vu that improved upon the second playing. It was true, it was true; when she'd spotted the boy at a rival school's basketball game, tall and lithe and fair, she knew she had to have him. Something in her body craved the touch of long fingers, the resistant pull of gleaming, silvered hair against her own hands. And when she learned his name... something secret low in her belly coiled and burned. But the boy was inexperienced, unskilled; too hesitant, he treated her as if she might break, and treated her pleasure as an afterthought. Summer's nerves hummed with dissatisfaction. 

"Then he wasn't doing something right." Rick caught her by surprise, caught her attention, her senses focused wholly on him as he brought her back to earth by cupping one long hand between her thighs, thin fingertips rubbing small circles into her heat through the cotton of her panties. She was warm, willing; but not wet as she should have been for as long as he'd watched them together. 

"Nnnn..." Summer moaned, arching into his touch, the little roll of her hips making the blood rush to his cock so fast his head spun. Still, he immediately paused, withdrawing his questing fingertips.

"No?" His tone was patient, almost bored. "Should we just pretend that I don't know?" 

"Please," she begged. A hundred unvoiced fantasies clamored to be realized and she wrapped those manicured fingers around his wiry wrist. "Don't stop." She dragged his hand back, head bowing like a penitent sinner when his nimble fingers dragged aside the flimsy cotton and stroked her velvet flesh. 

She bucked her hips and mewled, running her fingers down the edge of his lab coat till they brushed his belt buckle, then lower... Her fingertips assessed hesitantly at first, then with more confidence, rubbing firmly at the sizeable bulge tenting his courderoy slacks. 

Rick hissed, gently removing her hands and running them up her fragile rib cage, fondling her pert breasts with her small, warm hands under his. She squirmed. "Jesus Summer, you're fucking twisted." He muttered, not without a certain degree of dark admiration.

"It runs in -oh!- in the family..." She gasped, as he paused to lick and blow cool air on a pebbled nipple as he kissed his way down her body. Rick grinned, watching her mimic his moments - palm, gently stroke, pinch and flutter the fingertips over sensitized nerves... His cock throbbed, watching her play with her tits on his own workbench, and without a thought he knelt smoothly between her thighs, dragging her panties down her ankles. 

"Young punks never know how to eat a girl out." Rick announced, as if beginning a thesis on the matter. "It's like they think it's some- some fucking checklist or something, before the main event. They don't even- they have no clue what a girl's supposed to taste like, when she's really fucking hot for it." He glanced up at Summer, who was watching him with her lips parted slightly, breathing shallow. "Well fuck it."

The scent of her dizzied him, dancing with the alien alcohol in his blood and made the dark, possessive part of him stand up and howl. He kissed the tender skin of her inner thigh, suckling with lips and teeth for one long moment too many and leaving a deep indigo lovebite that she and any potential partners would witness for the next fortnight. 

He'd intended to tease her, to draw the moment out to a punishing length and make the lesson one she'd remember; but in a household so active the clock was always ticking. He parted her folds as if delving into a flower, lapping the honey from her center and curling his tongue around and over her pearl as she writhed and whimpered above him. When he slipped first one, then two fingers into her heat, pumping slowly, she tangled her fingers in his hair and ground her hips against his face, craving satisfaction. In short order, Rick delivered. Curling long fingers inside her, he rubbed an urgent pace, feeling her needy body tighten around his digits as he sealed his mouth over her bud and sucked. Her hands in his hair pulled painfully tight when she came, but he relished her abandon.Her taste flooded his mouth and he licked her eagerly, burying his face between her thighs, aquiline nose bumping her clit. He continued his attentions till she whimpered for respite, and then a cruel second or two more.

"Fuck, God!" Summer cried, slumping against the wall behind the workbench as her body shivered down from its high.

"That's me, baby girl." Rick retorted smartly, the picture of salaciousness as he sprawled on the garage floor, cock tenting his pants magnificently, licking her gleaming essence from his face and fingers with a long and wicked tongue.

"Want me to...?" Summer asked suggestively, hesitance clear in her voice. Even thoroughly debauched, Rick's boundaries did not invite trespass. 

In answer, her clothes and a keycard landed in her lap. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a key for the underground Phoenix lab, which still held a couple of intact specimens... Just in case. 

"No, get out. I have shit to do." Rick snarled, ever mercurial; covertly adjusting himself as he turned to his workbench and began replacing his tools on its surface. Summer was struggling red-faced into her clothes and he reached past her to grab his bottle and take another swig. "And the next time you decide to have a stand-in fuck you in my workshop, make sure it's a real Rick. I don't have time to clean up after other people's unfinished business." 

Leaning across the space between them, he offered her a swig from the bottle. She took a scorching sip; pulled a face, swallowed hard, and managed another. When their eyes met again, she managed a tiny smile - then handed back the bottle and slipped out of the workshop.

Rick sighed, inundated in the scent of sex and summer, more than a little drunk, and still hard - trying to rely on willpower for all of twenty-three seconds before rising and heading for a solitary and much-needed shower.


	3. The End is the Beginning is the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick is accustomed to difficult choices. Pragmatism comes naturally to the morally grey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coda: latin, (noun); an ending part of a piece of music or a work of literature or drama that is separate from the earlier parts
> 
> "We stopped looking for monsters under our bed when we realized that they were inside us." - Charles Darwin

The boy was slow, always so slow; ten steps behind intellectually and literally. Sweet, endearing, soft-hearted - everything that Rick had murdered in himself. He watched him approach the ship at a breakneck pace, stumbling on the hardscrabble earth of the alien planet; the toxic fog that rolled in once every galactic year - just his luck - only a few yards behind, seeping along the horizon.

_Too slow._

"Rick open the ship, it's not funny!" Morty wailed.

Summer was unconscious in the seat beside him, a small rivulet of crimson trickling from beneath matted auburn, concussed but alive. Breath passed shallowly from between softly parted lips, untainted by the poisoned atmosphere.

Outside the ship, the gaseous neurotoxin started to swirl around Morty's sneakers and he danced forward a few steps, pounding on the ship's hull as he cried out, voice cracking with panic and uncertainty. "Rick! Open the door!"

To open it was death, obviously, for himself and for the girl. The ship was equipped with an internal air filtration system but its external mechanisms had been heavily damaged by the planet's corrosive atmosphere. He would be lucky to get it off the ground.

He looked at Morty, eyes almost tender as the muddy green cloud swallowed his grandson and obscured him from sight. 

" _Rick!_ "

The boy's scream sounded desperate, terrified; not at all like the confident mulishness he had developed when questioning his grandfather's orders. Not at all like the reluctant youth, green and uninformed, who had wanted to linger and warn the locals when Rick first sensed doom on the horizon. Tender, good boy - lacking in that characteristic Sanchez pragmatism. The girl, on the other hand, had thrust her hot, dry hand into his and run at his command; falling only when a retaliatory blast from embittered pursuers caught her in the crossfire. 

"Sorry, Morty." Rick muttered, reaching into his breast pocket as he threw the ship into gear, launching it above the poison and death and into orbit. The certificate was a little worn, the gilt at the edges starting to flake off in places; but it would still be honored, he knew. A few creases marred its surface but it remained as legible as the day it had been offered to him...

_...And in the way of reparations for our terrible mistake, we would like to compensate you with this voucher for a free replacement Morty, in the event that your current Morty should-_

"Nothing personal." He swallowed hard, and punched the coordinates for Council Headquarters into the ship's panel with a grimace, hoping he could get it handled and get home and hopefully get blackout drunk before Summer came around and realized he'd left the brother she knew to die.

_Everybody's replaceable._

Almost everybody.


	4. Swallow Up The Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer needs just a little help moving on from Ethan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine." - Sigmund Freud
> 
> "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." - H.G. Wells

When he first heard the scuffling, rattling sounds, his eyes snapped open with the instinctive wariness of a predator caught unaware. He was disoriented, mouth tasting foul, and long fingers closed automatically on thin air, reaching blindly for the neck of a bottle that was no longer present. Grasping in a widening arc, he found it at last on the carpet, swearing in a rusty groan when it turned up empty. Behind him, the garage door burst open, and he heard with some alarm and a pounding head the rummaging of small hands amongst the shelves and boxes there. A moment later, the scraping sound bumped past again, this time accompanied by a sharp whiff of gasoline, and as his eyes adjusted at last to the vague half-light he realized he was sprawled like a broken corpse on the family sofa and not the stark narrow respite of his military-issue cot.

Footsteps padded past behind the sofa once more, and a soft thump reverberated from the bottom of the staircase, followed by a quiet familiar curse. "Fuck."

"S-summer?" Rick grumbled blearily. "Whassa-wha-what are you..." He waved the empty bottle vaguely, then dropped it with a thunk and an annoyed glare in its general, still-empty direction. "What the fuck are you doing? It's the middle of the - ugh - night."

"What do you care?" Her angst and seemingly directionless hostility puzzled and annoyed him; enormous brain floating in the void between drunk and hungover, between insomnia, blackout, and bitter dredging dawn.

"Wha?" He managed, rubbing the sleeve of his lab coat over chapped lips and carding fingers through his thick hair in an attempt to summon actively firing neurons to their stations.

"What. Do. You. Care?" She snapped out in a huff, finally releasing the bulging cardboard box she was dragging.

"Because you're being a crazy bitch and you woke me up-" He snapped, about to treat her to a classic Sanchez dressing-down; but Summer raised her proverbial gloves.

"Okay so you're not a crazy bitch when you turn yourself into a fucking  _cucumber_ -"

"Pickle." Rick corrected blandly.

"Whatthefuckever. And mom's not a crazy bitch when she glues like a zillion dead animal parts together for her  _art therapy bullshit_." She was building to her point, hands on her hips, and stamped one foot angrily on the floor, vaguely ridiculous but endearing in her sleep shorts and tennies. "But I'm a crazy bitch because I want to go fucking raid mutants for a couple weeks or have bigger tits or go build a bonfire out of Ethan's stuff because he's an  _asshole_  with a _little dick_  who doesn't even know how to spell  _socioeconomic_ -"

"Let's go."

His gravelly interruption brought her up short. "What?"

Rick had risen from his seat with a low groan, picking up the cardboard box she had been dragging down the stairs with an eyeroll of long-suffering. "Let's go burn this dickbag's shit."

Summer picked up the gas can she had pilfered from the garage and looked up at him, eyes shining in the dark with something like... like... Rick quashed it, turning his back on her and heading for the door with one long, loping stride. "Come on." he grunted, pre-dawn chill hitting his skin and knocking the sobriety back into him with all the clarity of an ugly and unforgiving universe.

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

He could have chosen any planet in any dimension, he supposed, to light a fire. There were no fire marshals on Gazorpazorp, no Parks and Rec department in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth. It would have certainly been easier, less dramatic, less potentially problematic, to take Summer just outside the reaches of the mundane to soothe her aching teenage heart and inflamed sense of injustice. But it seemed perfect, somehow, to take her to the campground where all high school romances in the middle American suburb lived and died. She kicked rocks into a circle haphazardly, canvas shoes collecting soil and pine needles that she brushed off her knit socks absently in the grey light of a false dawn. With nary a flinch, she upended the box, shattered picture frames and dried flower petals, crumpled notes, snapped gold chains, crushed trinkets and forgotten t-shirts falling to the damp earth like broken memories into a grave. Hell hath no fury like a Sanchez scorned. Her jaw set in a grim line that reminded him too much of himself, she dumped the gasoline over the pile in an indiscriminate shower, coating the once-beloved objects liberally in a reeking volatile shroud. Then she pulled a box of matches from the pocket of her shorts.

"Jesus Christ, Summer." Rick snapped, snatching the matches from her hand and dragging her back several paces. "Do you like having eyebrows?" He withdrew a plasma pistol, slapping it into her right palm instead. "Here."

Summer spared him a glare, but it was fleeting, her attention diverted wholly by the gun in her hand. It was, like most of his weaponry, a polished piece - smoothly cylindrical, bullet-shaped, fitting comfortably in her grip like it belonged there. The chamber glowed softly with a crimson light and seemed almost to hum beneath the stroking fingertips of her left hand. Rick cut his eyes to the side, turning slightly away and clearing his throat.

Fuck, but it looked  _good_  in her hands.

"J-just point and shoot, Summer; it's not a morphizer."

At his pointed jab, her demeanor changed instantly; and suddenly it was if she had been born to it - standing side-arm to present a smaller target, feet planted shoulder-width apart, one arm behind her back, spine ramrod straight, she held out the pistol at arm's length, sighted down the barrel and fired. A crimson beam erupted from the tip of the weapon and ignited the small bonfire with a roar, the gasoline and vapors rising from it creating a bright orange blowback that turned her cheeks pink and tossed her loose hair back from her shoulders, snapping in the sudden breeze.

 _Fucking **fuck**_. Arousal rolled through him like a kick in the gut. He seated himself on a carved log, designed for smores and singalongs, and pulled out his flask. When she turned, breathless, gun still in hand, to seek his approval, he merely raised a brow and held the flask out to her.

"Summer for the win."

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

The day had started to dawn well and truly, birds singing in the trees as the sun burned away the morning mist. The ground around them warmed and steamed as loam gave up its moisture and flowers opened their tender buds. Beautiful, really. Rick curled his lip.

"I'd kill for a cigarette." he commented idly, watching the embers of Summer's first love curl into ash and trying to ignore the way she snuggled into his side as the scotch in her blood and the sunshine on her skin conspired against him. There was a long silence, and then she jumped, as if remembering something.

"I have some weed."

Rick raised a brow. "You. Have weed."

"Yeah, G- Rick, I'm not an idiot, I'm capable of buying drugs."

He snorted and rolled his eyes - "Okay kid, we'll come back to that. Hand it over."

Summer hesitated, hand stilling halfway into her purse as if caught reaching into a cookie jar. "Are you going to take it?"

"Yeah and roll a fat bone," Rick grinned, pulling a packet of papers from within his lab coat. The package was worn, as if they had not seen use in some time; and printed in an alien language, but clearly recognizable as rolling papers. Summer grinned back and handed over the tiny baggie.

Long, slim fingers made swift work of the project as Rick rolled two pencil-thick joints with casual ease. He held them between thin lips and sparked both at once with the pink plastic lighter she handed him, raising an ironic eyebrow as he eyed the neon thing. He offered one of the smoldering joints to Summer and she took it, attempting to hold it between her lips with the practiced nonchalance he espoused. He chuckled dryly at her fumbling and pulled her to her feet. "Come on."

"Wha?" She complained plaintively, warm in the sun and hazy already in the pluming smoke of her first puff.

Rick dragged her a few paces back, then dropped unceremoniously to the grass again, stretching out in the relative shade of his ship, smoking lazily. Curls and rings of smoke drifted idly heavenward from the tip of his joint and Summer's, and he pondered the abstract shapes and the softly curling waves of Summer's tousled hair. She sprawled on the ground beside him, puffing away like she had something to prove.

"S-slow down, kid. Where'd you get this shit anyway?"

"School." She muttered, looking askance.

"Right." He scoffed, derision curling out on a grey cloud. "I'm sure your neighborhood hookup has a medical grade indica hybrid just stinking up his backpack."

Summer flushed. It was insensate to attempt fooling Rick in matters of the illicit. "Fine. When you and Morty left me at that alien truck stop to go to the bathroom, I bought it from some guys in the parking lot. With some leftover pills from when Dad worked for the Federation."

A long, pregnant pause followed, and for a moment Summer braced herself, assuming that the silence represented the calm before the storm. Then Rick started to laugh, smoke stuttering out of his lungs in short harsh breaks. "You used stolen Federation contraband to trade with drug dealers on an _alien planet_ , could have asked for probably any recreational substance in the galaxy, and you came back with an eighth of Earth  _cannabis_?" His last laugh tapered off in a long sigh, grin on his face like an advertisement for the positive effects of dopamine. "Christ, Summer, you really are seventeen."

Summer scowled, her elbow digging into his ribs with a deliberate ruthlessness as she stubbed the roach out in the dirt. "Yeah, well it was good enough to smoke you up." She rejoined, without much ire.

Rick reclined against the ship, flicking his short away into the distant ashes of their earlier fire. He braced one arm beneath his head, the other looping around Summer's shoulder's companionably, with little thought. He was pleasantly high, the sun warm on his face in a manner he hadn't thought to enjoy in years, cannabinoids and alcohol humming a charming summer tune he couldn't quite catch through his head. He pressed his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her shampoo; fresh fruit and smoke and sunshine. "Yeahhh, babygirl;" he hummed softly; pretending to ignore the shiver that trembled down her spine and nestled her lush form tighter against him. "Yeah, it was."

He lounged silently, enjoying the buzz, his back to the hull and long legs stretched out on the grass; enjoying the warmth of an armful of girl - a rare indulgence. Every so often he would take a tiny sip from his flask, bouying the already pleasant high Summer had so graciously provided. When she made a grab for his whiskey he dug long fingers into her ribs, tickling, and she lunged forward to escape his reach, gasping with laughter. He smirked, lazy indulgence replaced with a devil's self-satisfaction as she flopped over on the grass beside him, a breathless rag doll. His smug look vanished, however, when she stretched her legs across his thighs, arching her back and yawning as if she intended to go to sleep there. It was a pose she had never dared adopt with him before, a position of closeness and casual comfort no one else in the household would have considered remotely safe to approach. Her breasts beneath her thin t-shirt were pert and braless, soft curves under cotton that bounced gently whenever she giggled or sighed. Relaxed now, his true self surfaced from his id's murky underbelly, and Rick stared with impunity.

The warm weight of her lay across his lap, and he said nothing. In the sunny heat of midday, in the quiet of the neglected campground, it seemed like nothing needed to be said. He took a sip from his flask, and offered her one, and when he took it back the sweetness of her lips lingered on the rim like dew on a morning rose. The sun beat down on them and beneath her thighs his cock throbbed; and she rolled her hips gently as if she were innocently stretching, and he knew she knew.

When he returned his flask to his pocket, his hand brushed against her leg. He could have pulled his touch away but didn't, instead letting it linger, palm dry and slightly calloused on her skin, gliding slowly up her thigh. Summer sighed softly, sweet as the breeze, and rolled her hips again. Long fingers pressed down tight on tender flesh and just as swiftly lifted, massaging gently, soothing and bringing a flush to fair golden skin. The girl in his lap hummed softly, knees bent, soles of her sneakers planted in the dirt, reaching out with one hand to pluck a long blade of grass and press its sweet root between her full lips. She rolled her gaze up to meet his, feline eyes slitted against the sun; flicked the tip of her tongue against the little green stem and bit down.

**_F u c k._ **

His hands on her gripped and pressed, fingers of his right sliding over the silky slope of her inner thigh and rubbing in small concentric circles, making her squirm a little in his lap, making him burn. His fingertips traced patterns and symbols over sensitive flesh, Summer's breath coming shallow as she gazed up at the sky and pretended obliviousness. His hand slipped beneath the hem of her shorts, warm cotton brushing his skin, no resistance meeting him, only shadow and warmth. Ever the clever bastard, he raised his left hand to her ribs, sensitive fingertips dancing over curving bones so that she squeaked, squirmed, and bucked her hips right up into his questing touch.

"Ahh, fuck  _yes..._ " he hissed; as Summer gasped and turned red; the flush creeping down her neck as his cunning fingers stroked her heat. She was positively dripping for him, soft trimmed curls and swollen folds slick and needy. The girl whimpered, trying to grind down against his delicate probing touch. She succeeded only in furthering her own frustration, and rubbing against the erection straining in his pants. "'Is that for me, babygirl?" he purred, voice all hard liquor and bad decisions. "You wet for me, baby?"

Summer moaned, pressing her thighs together in an attempt to soothe the ache, trapping his teasing hand. He thrust his middle finger inside her and pumped slowly, and like magic her knees fell apart, her eyes squeezing shut as she keened. "Fuck, goddamn, Rick,  _yes,_ " she cursed him, and fuck if it didn't make him even harder to hear her voice swearing up a storm in true Sanchez fashion. 

_Goddamn._

Rick released her abruptly, and Summer let out a plaintive whine at the loss of contact, but he hauled her up from the ground like a demon raising a virgin sacrifice and bowed her body beneath his, her back to his narrow chest. She tried to rub her thighs together, to help finish what he'd started, but he slipped a knee between her legs and dragged them apart, forcing her to bend her spine to the earth like a supplicant in earnest prostration. The heels of her hands dug into the soil, leaving marks. There was dirt under her nails. She smelled like pot and body spray and fresh cut grass and when his cock twitched against her ass she ground back against him, mewling. 

_Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ._

"You want it, baby? You want me to make you feel good?" Long fingers pressed into her hips and dragged her back against his cock as he growled the words into her ear, urging a selfish answer to a selfless question. An uncomplicated man, at his core. 

" _Pleeease,_ " Summer whined, breathless and squirming under his grip.

"Please _what?_ Yes or no?" He snapped, sharp and impatient and  _himself_   again, for a moment. 

"Yes!" She yelped, as he slapped the full curve of her ass and pulled her loose shorts down to her knees. 

"Good girl." He growled, and Summer trembled right down to her bones. Long fingers snaked around the curve of her hip, cupping her heat, dipping into her velvet vise and rubbing the crux of her with competent, deliberate strokes. "That's my good girl." 

He was an utter bastard, saying the words he knew she longed to hear and feeling her shake like a reed in a strong wind under him. All she had ever wanted was for someone to make her feel good, feel wanted, feel  _beautiful._  She hardly noticed when his free hand slipped between their bodies, loosened his belt buckle; but noticed at once when the hot, hard length of him pressed against her backside.  She mewled, arching her back and raising her hips like a cat in heat. He watched, feeling stupid with lust and astonishment, as a clear drop of precum dripped from the head of his cock and smeared across the ripe white curve of her ass. He curled one hand around the base of his cock, lazily jerking off at the wanton sight until Summer's plaintive whimper cut into his reverie. 

"Rick, please!"

She was looking back at him over one shoulder, face flushed, lower lip bitten between teeth that had given up on her retainer just a year or two too early. The sun had brought out a few freckles on her cheeks and collarbone, and the part of her spine bared by her t-shirt riding up over her torso was beginning to turn red. He wondered what it would look like with his come splashed over it. _Ah, fuck._

Rick pressed her forward, one large hand splayed over her hip, the other gliding the thick head of his cock teasingly over her pussy. She whimpered, twisting her hips, trying to press back onto his length, but the hand on her hip held her ruthlessly in place; keeping her still while he played with her self-control - and his own. The head of his cock was glistening, only the tip stretching her - in, out, repeat. Rick kept his jaw clamped shut but his nostrils flared, head spinning at the scent of sex on the warm air and Summer's increasingly incoherent pleading.

_Nothing this sweet should ever come without suffering._

He felt the girl start to weaken under his hands, all but sobbing with frustration as he continued to tease her; the depth of feeling she craved just out of reach. When she bowed her head to her hands, her volatile curses dying to mere whimpers, Rick bent to growl in her ear again. "Patience is a virtue, baby." Gripping her hips tightly enough to leave bruises, he thrust roughly home.

It was like plugging in a neutrino bomb. Summer was instantly alive again, fingers scrabbling against the grass for purchase, his name on her lips a wail. He slid his hands around to fondle the sweet plump breasts he'd so admired, and they were as soft and warm and responsive beneath his touch as he'd imagined they would be. Summer was already gasping, the rock of her hips against his own erratic and sharp; and he knew she would fall apart at any moment - which was a mercy, because loathe as he was to admit it, he wasn't going to last long. It had taken everything he had in him to make it this far without just burying himself balls-deep inside her and pounding till his vision turned white. Something about the situation had lit up all of his deliciously nasty little quirks like buttons on a switchboard and now he was feeling them tingle down his spine and settle with a heavy coiling low in his gut. Summer groaned his name, low and dirty as her right hand closed on a fistful of earth and pine needles, and he felt his balls tighten. 

" _Rick..._ "

"Yeah, baby?" He rasped, harsh lust and possession in his tone concealing the strain. "You like that cock? You gonna be a good girl and come for me?" A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her skin and she glowed beneath his praise, whining. 

He snaked a hand down between her thighs, rubbing her clit in patient deliberate circles that belied his sense of urgency. His subterfuge irrelevant, she came almost instantly; her spine snapping up like a bow; nails digging into the dirt, strangled cry startling birds roosting in the trees above. "Oh, yeah," Rick growled with savage triumph, increasing his pace and aggression, chasing his own satisfaction. Wet heat bathed his cock as her body spasmed around his thrusts, clamping down on him so tightly it stole his breath. She went limp, held up only by his will, the sounds of their coupling loud in the midday forest. He felt his orgasm overtaking him like a storm and pulled out barely in time, painting the tempting swell of her ass with thick white lines, a hot splash of his seed highlighting the pretty curve of her spine that had so captured his fancy earlier. Without thinking, he leaned forward and licked it, the taste of her sweat mingling with his own musk a pleasing symphony as his tongue followed the sweep of her iliocostalis. 

Summer twitched, so wrung out his perversion barely registered. "Did you just lick that? Gross. You're a sick fuck."

Rick slapped her ass with his oh-so-slowly softening cock, deliberately including her tender, pink pussy in the open-handed swat he delivered to her entire backside as he dropped to his back on the grass with a sated groan. "Best fuck you'll ever have."

Summer slumped onto her belly, too tired to even register the pinprick when a large mosquito landed on the sensitive skin of her ankle and helped itself to a post-coital high. "Probably true." She conceded after a long pause. Rummaging around in her purse, she withdrew a crumpled, black-and-pink pack and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with the same pink plastic lighter and passing it to Rick.

He raised a brow at her, incredulous. ""You had cigarettes this whole time?"

Summer smirked. "I  _am_  seventeen."

Rick snorted and took a drag, staring at the sky as the sun dragged on into afternoon and his core temperature cooled. Fucked up family. Fucked up world. 

When they eventually returned to the house, there was a certain fragile uncertainty hanging in the air surrounding them - as if the others wondered, but didn't dare question their absence. As if the scent of smoke and savagery and disregard for the acceptable was too strong, too threatening. A certain anxiety that any issue too hard to deal with might find itself taken to a secluded spot, doused in gasoline, and set ablaze. 

That suited Rick fine.

Just fine.


	5. Mouthful of White Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer makes some decisions. Better the devil you know, right?
> 
> Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The healthy man generally does not torture others. Generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers." - Carl Jung
> 
> "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov

"So you're not my g-... you're not my Rick?" Summer asked quietly, gazing up at him in the dim, quiet corridor; her expression was uncharacteristically open and raw, green eyes so wide and long-lashed they begged to be innocent. The family enjoying the balmy weather on the patio downstairs were sharing their last awkwardly hostile barbecue together before Summer departed for college. Even Jerry had been invited, his exile temporarily lifted in light of the celebratory mood, his name added to the whitelist for a positively expansive twelve hours.

She knew, of course. Morty had blurted the secret almost as soon as it was his to tell; so young and green then, incapable of keeping his head on straight without a guiding hand. So markedly different from the cool-eyed youth Rick occasionally felt watching him, when he thought the older man was absorbed in his work. Summer was worldly enough to take her little brother at his word; and so she knew the answer to her question even if it didn't matter and changed nothing.

She asked anyway. Something in her wanted to hear it from his lips.

"I'm - _hic_ \- nobody's Rick," he informed her, drinking straight from a bottle of midshelf vodka he'd casually liberated from the trunk of Jerry's hatchback. He stared her down, unable or unwilling to offer her even the dignity of sarcasm if he would not gift her the solace of compassion. "I'm nothing."

Summer's soft features tensed, her lower lip trembling just a little as her eyes grew glossy and shone magnified by her tears, gold flecks and bands of amber like distant aberrations in the silent, timeless void of space. One single track painted its way down her cheek, through the powder she had worn to hide her spray of youthful freckles and please her mother. The sick part of him proud of placing it there wanted to reach out, cup her cheek in his thin hand and run his tongue along the trail, marking his territory. Sorrow and pain. Rickland.

He'd made it no secret what he thought of her scholastic ambitions. Rick had expected Summer to simply go on existing as the rest of the family did - remaining at arm's length, whenever he wanted her. The idea of her pursuing higher education at a distant university, rather than under his own haphazard tutelage...

_I'll tell you how I feel about school... It's not a place for smart people._

Before he could think better of it, he gripped her jaw between long fingers, pulling her forward into a bruising kiss. He tasted like cheap vodka and she tasted like lemonade, the rasp of his five o'clock shadow rough against her skin. She gripped the lapels of his lab coat to steady herself, swaying with a muffled little whimper that shot straight to his prick, and he released her like she was a lab experiment gone wrong.

He stared at her for a moment, lips slightly parted and gleaming with a smudge of the gloss she'd painted her own with. He licked them. _Cherry_. He reached up and rubbed it away with the ball of his thumb, taking another swig from the bottle in the same motion, sliding down again into the murky quagmire of ironic amoral detachment where he dwelled.

"Better go pack, _college girl_."

She spun away from him, retreating down the hall to her room and leaving him alone with only the scent of her coconut suntan lotion for company. Like an animal, he let the dark lead him back to his den; where he fell onto his cot like a corpse, staring at the ceiling and watching it spin, listening to the sound of her bedroom door slamming repeat on loop in his ears, in tandem with the pounding of his head.

_I'm nothing._

 

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

 

"Can't believe you're still with him." The slim blonde said, checking her perfect manicure as Summer tossed her bag over her shoulder and returned a text for the third time that night.

"I know." The redhead returned, and sighed. "I'm going home to my family's for Christmas though, so I'm going to break up with him then." Summer ignored the dull swirl of excitement that stirred in her stomach at the idea of her visiting her family home for the first time since she'd started college two years before. She had started dating her current boyfriend, Greg, after the first semester of her freshman year ended, and had stayed with him and some friends at a bougie ski lodge over the previous holidays and studied in an internship program over the summer. Part of her, an ugly secret part she refused to acknowledge, had felt anxiety at the thought of stepping over the threshold, before... Now, it was the devil she knew. She shook off the dark thoughts and smiled at her companion. "It'll be good to get out of the apartment for a while. Come on, let's stop at the Monkey's Paw and have one more drink."

"Took the words right out of my mouth." The blonde, mollified, linked her arm with Summer's and followed her out of the bar and out into the chilly, late autumn Chicago night.

More than one drink later, as they piled into the warm leatherbound interior of a cab, the blonde laid her sleepy head on Summer's shoulder and mumbled, "Seriously though, what's with that? It took you all semester to work up the nerve to leave him."

"I don't know." Summer replied, gaze almost wistful as she eyed the streetlights passing by in the night. "I guess he just reminds me of someone."

 

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

 

"Greg?" Summer asked warily, acutely aware of the scent of whiskey and tictacs on her breath as she stepped into the apartment and, keys jingling softly, shut the door behind her.

She had met Gregory, as he preferred to be called, in a pub just off campus while using a fake ID that Rick had slipped her on her eighteenth birthday with a profanity-laden warning against telling her mother. It was late autumn when Greg walked into her life, and she had been sitting at the bar alone, sipping a beer and trying to come up with an excuse for skipping Thanksgiving with her divorced parents, disinterested little brother... and the drunkenly hostile patriarch of the family. Greg provided her with a handy excuse.

He was older... Too much older. He had been a TA of some sort, but had stepped out of his professorial role several years earlier, citing academic fatigue and existential ennui. Which turned out to be code for: a fat trust fund he'd never grown out of, an overdeveloped ego he'd never grown into, and no desire to pursue anything resembling an accomplishment. He'd seemed so appealing at first - tall, going grey at the temples, grumpily disheveled with a well-stocked bar in his casually well-appointed apartment. He was sternly aloof with her, his attention short and hard-won; and Summer let herself work too hard to earn it, all of her parents' finest flaws shining through in her youthful infatuation.

The man turned cruel, inevitably; accustomed to the pretty, pert and sweetly amusing toy that came at his beck and call, he had no use for the Summer that wished to bury herself in her studies during finals week, or spend time with her friends free from his looming influence. The bar became less lavish, her paramour's speech less educated and more ominous, air bearing the scent of whiskey and danger.

Returning to a quiet apartment was rarely the signal for an all-clear. She glanced around, straining her ears, but heard no music or television from the adjoining rooms. Setting down her things, she walked through the entryway, small kitchen, turning a corner into the living area. Greg was seated on the sofa, halfway through a bottle of scotch judging by the remainder on the table before him, watching her.

"What?" She asked, posture hesitant but tone sharp. Best get this over with.

"Whore."

She flinched a little, but stood her ground. "I told you I was out with Katie."

"Right."

"Whatever." She turned her back on him, sliding off her heels and kicking them under the sofa. "I'm tired and you're stupid."

"What did you say, you little bitch?" Hard fingers bit into her upper arm, jerking her around. "What did you call me?"

Summer struggled, her eyes wide and frightened, then knit her brows and spat the words at him like poison. "You're fucking _stupid_. Let me go. You think I'm afraid of you? _You?_ Let me _go._ " On the last word, she wrenched her arm free and stumbled back a step, losing her balance.

Much taller than she, Greg pushed her back onto the sofa and snatched up the scotch bottle, shattering it against the corner of the granite coffee table. He pointed it at her in a trembling hand that dripped with scotch and a rivulet of blood, as if he would cut her with it.

"Jesus Christ Greg, what the _fuck?_ " Summer panted breathlessly, eyes wildly searching for an out. She found it in the extravagantly embroidered Turkish rug at his feet.

_Always hated that stupid rug. Told him it was a knockoff._

Bending at the waist to duck beneath his arm's reach, she gripped the colorful carpet in both hands and pulled. The tall man flew backwards and landed on his back on the coffee table, glass shattering and the wind knocked out of him. Summer scrambled past him, grabbing her purse and locking herself in the bedroom.

_Now what?_

She hadn't dialed 911 since she was a teenager. There was only one number in the universe that she trusted to help her out of any sticky, shady or otherwise untoward situation. Pulling her phone out of her purse with shaking hands, she prayed for a full battery and a clear connection, scrolled through her contacts and dialed.

The line rang three times, then a rusty, miserable, blessedly familiar voice answered. "What do you want, kid?"

"Rick!" Summer yelped. Then, reminding herself that she hadn't spoken to the mad scientist, wanted criminal and self-proclaimed Master of the Universe in almost eighteen months, she dialed down her desperation to what seemed like more socially acceptable levels. "Rick. Hi. Um."

"Um." He said dryly, and she could almost hear the eyebrow raised on the other line, and oh, it was good to talk to him again; but she could hear Greg starting to stir in the wreckage of the living room and there was just _no time..._

"Did mom tell you I'm coming home for Christmas?"

"Only the first 4,627 times, after that I stopped listening." Rick answered. "Why?"

"I... Um... C-could you maybe come pick me up?" She asked timidly, wringing her hands as the phone grew warm against her flushed cheek and she heard Greg call, slurringly, for her to drag her ass out of hiding.

"Car in the shop?" He sneered, just to chap her ass. She hadn't accepted her mother's offer of a car, stating loftily that Chicago's public transit system was cheaper and better suited to the environment.

On the other side of the door, something large grated against the floor, then banged loudly. Summer jumped. "Rick, please! Can you please just come get me?!"

"Relax, kid." Rick dropped the phone, pulling his portal gun out of his pocket; and with a practiced flick of his fingers entered Summer's coordinates, aimed, and fired.

The green spiral erupted into the bedroom just as the hammering sounded again, and Summer leapt to her feet and darted into his arms as he came striding out of the portal, glancing toward the locked door warily before looking up at Rick, patting both hands on his chest as if he were a guard dog she could coax back into the kennel.

_Woof._

Rick swept Summer behind him with one arm as if she were merely a bit of luggage he had come to collect, crossing to the door with a grim scowl on his high brow. Counting off the seconds between heavy, erratic thumps, he reached out with long fingers, flicked the deadbolt open, and stepped aside.

With a splintering crash the wood gave way and Greg burst into the room, looking bewildered first at the ease of his entry as he stumbled ass-over-teakettle through the door that had previously been giving him so much trouble, and next at the tall, glowering man that loomed over him.

"Can I help you?" Rick demanded aggressively, plucking the heavy brass bookend the other man had been using to pound the door down from his nerveless fingers and tossing it aside. "You -ugh- hapless fuckwit?"

"She-" Still on the floor, Greg glanced at Summer. He was still drunk and furious, now merely confused as well, eyeing Rick warily. "You-" He slumped, shaking his head, looking for a moment something like Jerry. "Bitch."

Rick rolled his eyes and delivered a savage, long-legged kick to the other man's temple, concussing the drunk and knocking him out cold. "Fuck's sake. We're leaving."

Summer picked up her already-packed bag quietly, giving the unconscious body of her now officially ex-boyfriend a wide berth, and followed Rick through the portal. She was drunk and exhausted and the adrenaline dump that had possibly saved her life had worn off, and all she wanted to do was find dreamless sleep in her childhood bed, and not analyze the little thrill of excitement that had thrummed up her spine at Rick's viciousness.

 

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

 

Beth's home was much as Summer remembered it. Quiet and generally orderly when the various members of the family were scattered to their respective quadrants of the house, it descended into awkward and vaguely antagonistic forced interaction during mealtimes and any moment when two or more members happened to occupy the same region for long enough for Beth to notice and institute Quality Time. And everything, everywhere, was permeated with an awareness of Rick. It was as if his presence was a living thing, an animus that had grown stronger, more dominant in the empty house in the middling years since her father had left, since she had moved out... Morty sought sanctuary elsewhere most of the time - at the local library, playing video games with acquaintances or doing whatever nerd things young social outcasts of the lowest order did in his generation. Summer had missed the boat, being female and of a slightly higher caste during her own coming of age. Her little brother would be graduating in the spring, an anomaly that seemed impossible to wrap her head around. In his increasing absence, and Beth's mid-life-critical, wine-sodden apathy, Rick's presence was overpowering.

Summer slipped from her bed one morning before dawn, all the Christmas decorations on and glittering but the remainder of the house dark and silent. The tile floor of the bathroom nearest her room was cruelly cold, and she danced from foot to sock-clad foot as she washed her hands under a chilly tap and hurried downstairs to the kitchen, hoping for something hot to drink and wishing she'd worn the ridiculous slippers her mother had given her as an early present. To her surprise, there was already a pot of coffee on the counter, and the back door was slightly ajar.

She poured a cup, leaving it black; and slipped through the doorway, holding her cup at shoulder level warily as if prepared to dump it on any would-be intruders. On the other side of the door, wearing only his usual lab-coat and a pair of black leather gloves to protect against the cold, Rick sat on the patio, eyebrow raised.

"Y-you expecting the invasion of the fuckin' coffee snatchers, Summer?" He drawled, withdrawing his flask from his breast pocket and dumping another measure of whiskey into his own coffee, black like hers. It was clearly shaping up to be that kind of morning.

Summer huffed, half amused and half irritated and unwilling to show either, making a grab for the flask and missing. She dropped into the deck chair beside him, deliberately fixing her eye on the square of steel and liquor and not the long, lean line of him stretched out, legs up and crossed at the ankle on the patio table. "Give it."

He eyed her right back, her demanding demeanor leaving him surprisingly unruffled. "Fine." He handed it over and she splashed a generous pour into her own coffee before handing it back. She took a long, burning swallow; then balanced the mug between her knees, withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from her robe and lighting two at once, a trick she had watched him perform once or twice or a hundred times in her head. She offered Rick one and he took it.

"What are you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep."

He grunted. Wasn't it always the same story. He could have, should have left it that; left the conversation sleeping there on the chilly pavement with cigarette smoke and coffee vapor that smelled like good whiskey curling upward in the morning air around them. He didn't. His mind was a restless engine, running till the rest of him wanted to scream with it; digging up things better left buried, prying open and smashing apart to get at the rich, meaty answers it craved - even if they turned out to be poison. Even if it fucking killed him.

"So- so what, Summer?" He asked slowly, twirling his cigarette between thin fingers, taking a long drag, tapping ash thoughtfully from the end before returning it to his lips and speaking around the smolder in a plume of smoke, a dragon in disguise. "Was that your boyfriend or your babysitter?"

Summer flicked her ash out over the cold concrete. "Are we really talking about controlling lovers? You don't get to judge, Rick. You were with _Uni-_ "

"He was too old for you." He turned to face her, grey eyes steady and still, withholding all emotion.

Her voice turned icy; colder than the air that stole the breath from her lips and turned it white. "You don't get to make that decision for me, _Rick_. I _liked_ that he was older." She tossed her hair over her shoulder, taking another drag from her cigarette as if his feelings were of no concern to her. "What do you care, anyway? I mean, you're not even my real gr-"

"You want to bet a fuckin' DNA test on that?" Rick's voice cut her off, and his tone was sharp, as if more rested on the matter than her respect for his opinion on her love life.

 _More._ Not much more. Just common decency and all his self-control; held in place with a small sharp pin the width of a human hair. He held out a device, a small genetic mapping spectrometer, with a clean slide ready and waiting to prick her finger and prove her wrong.

They stared each other down for a long moment, green eyes locked with cool grey, breathing shallow in the morning mist. Finally Summer swallowed and looked away, sitting back in her chair. "No." She felt flushed despite the chill, the intensity of Rick's stare making the blood rush to her face.

Rick pocketed the device without challenging her. He felt... strangely defeated. Felt the weak whisper of his better intentions slide back beneath the icy mirrored surface and drown. Felt his truer nature surge forward eagerly in the darkness; arrogant and selfish and perverse. He rose to his feet, finishing his spiked coffee in one swallow that left a rill of dark liquid trickling along his jaw till he wiped it away on the sleeve of his lab coat.

He paused at the door, hand on the lintel. "How long are you staying?"

She shrugged, attempting nonchalance. "Dunno. I deferred my classes. A while, I guess."

A sly smirk twitched at the edge of his mouth. "That's my girl." He was gone before she could respond.

Summer stayed on the porch, sipping her coffee, her body thrumming with barely-contained excitement at his pronouncement.

 

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

 

When the green portal opened again in the Chicago apartment, it was night once more. The door had been repaired, but poorly, and the mess in the living room cleaned up. The man who lived here was not an animal, nor was he stupid. He possessed the basic cunning required to make himself and his living space presentable, should the authorities come calling. He was an academic, after all, not a brute.

It would have been better for him, if he had been an animal, if he had indeed been stupid. Would have been better if he had remembered Rick as more than just a fever dream brought on by his drunken stupor and his rage at his wayward young girlfriend. He intended to bring Summer back into line, when she returned from her family home after the holidays were over.

When chartreuse light split open the space between his bed and his flat-screen tv, interrupting his own personal Netflix and chill session and ripping a hole in space-time, it began to dawn on Greg how awfully mistaken he had been.

Rick Sanchez, on the other hand, was a brute. Burdened with an overwhelming genius unrivaled in this or any universe that he had yet discovered; he had a talent for destruction, sometimes accidental, most often calculated and deliberate. He was selfish and obscene, and as the portal delivered him to Greg's bedside, he had just enough of a buzz going to really make the most of it.

"H-hey, you fuck." He greeted blandly, as the other man attempted to scramble away from him. "N-no no, you stay there." He aimed a weapon at the bed and fired; it made barely a sizzle, but the hole in the mattress dripped and melted in an acrid-smelling ooze, the ragged circle ever-widening.

"What the fuck?" Greg gasped, arms crossed across his torso and legs drawn up in a defensive posture, crouched at the head of the bed. He watched Rick warily as he stood at the foot of the bed, gun in one hand, flask in the other.

"Heard you fucked my girl." Rick spat. He raised a brow, fixed a glare on the other man as if he would shoot him dead right then.

"What? I-" Greg stammered, desperate to say literally anything to placate the man with a death ray pointed at his head.

"I-I'm just kidding, Greg," Rick sneered, and Greg slumped, momentarily disarmed. Rick's sneer disappeared, replaced with an expression of utter emptiness, grey eyes chilly. "I heard you hit her." He flicked a tab on the weapon and it powered up with a whine, glowing dully. "So I'm gonna make it hurt."

The first shot was a bullseye, neatly castrating Summer's abusive ex and ensuring that he would shortly shuffle off the mortal coil. Greg was rigid, eyes bulging, mouth open in a silent scream; entering shock instantly. Rick eyed the damage, then the weapon he had created, with coldhearted appreciation. "Full disclosure buddy, that one was because you put your dick in her. But the rest are gonna be because you hit her, okay? Let's get started."

 

~(^)~ ~(^)~ ~(^)~

 

The predawn hours were becoming their time. Beth was sleeping off a wine drunk in the master bedroom, door tightly locked against intrusion and the passage of time. Morty played video games until the early hours and then crashed out wherever he landed, often on the living room couch. Rick had commandeered a room that had previously served as Jerry's office, making a small bedroom for himself beneath the eaves of the attic and abandoning the closet to his ever-encroaching work. It was closest to Summer's room and she often bumped into him coming or going in the wee hours of the morning when they both felt the restless stirrings of insomnia and mutual awareness.

He was awake when she opened his door and slipped into his bed, but he pretended not to be, all approximately 183 centimeters of him and the somewhat unsubtle beginnings of his morning wood. He lay on his back, for once actually wearing grey pinstriped pajama pants and a black tee and not passed out in his rumpled lab coat. One arm cushioned his head against the thin pillow, the other at his side, quilt tangled around his long legs. She slithered in beside him and lay there quietly breathing, watching him, her eyes tracing the lines of his face in profile. He could feel the weight of her gaze on him and was relieved when she finally spoke.

"My friend Katie? From Chicago?"

"Blonde girl. Nice legs." He didn't open his eyes.

Summer ignored the twinge of jealousy that fluttered behind her ribs, biting her lip as she picked at the blanket. Katie did have nice legs - she had often admired them, and a time or two wondered what it would be like to kneel between them herself. She blinked. Rick was looking at her, and a blush rose to her cheeks though she knew - or at least hoped - that he had not yet developed the ability to read her thoughts.

"She said that Greg disappeared from his apartment. The cops said the place was totally trashed, like there had been some weird fire. They said it almost looked like acid or something." She kept her tone deliberately light, asking nothing, implying nothing, merely sharing the information she had received.

Rick's gaze didn't waver. "No idea what you're talking about."

Summer gave a tiny smile, but her eyes were limpid jade pools again, mossy green with amber edges, flecks of gold sparking in the dim light of his bedroom. "Thought you'd say that."

Without a word she tugged the blanket free from his legs and turned her back to his front, snuggling in against him without waiting for permission. Rick stiffened, about to withdraw, his early-morning erection suddenly very interested in the plump curves being pressed against him; then decided he was tired of the uphill battle. Tired of pretending he didn't want what he wanted. Tired of saying no when the answer was yes.

He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her tighter against him, and pressed a kiss against the nape of her neck, feeling her shiver all the way down to her toes. Her hair smelled like coconuts in the dead of winter somehow, and he was instantly transported back to that moment in the hallway before she'd left for college. He pressed his cock into her ass, unable to help himself, and she ground back against him, moaning softly.

"F-fuck, Summer," The words were whispered into her hair, and she whimpered, spine undulating prettily, her hips rocking into him and making him so hard it was dizzying, exposing the little delicate bumps of her spine to his lips and gently nipping teeth. She whined, taking hold of his hand, which was holding her waist ferociously tight, and moving it up to cup her breast. "Ah, _fuck_ , good girl." He was lost, utterly lost. "Such a good girl." He played with the rosy pebbled peak till she mewled plaintively for _more_.

"What do you want, baby?"

Summer stilled, her body quivering. He held her so tightly he could feel every beat of her heart against his own chest; every shallow, hungry intake of breath. He could almost hear the wheels turning in her own head. "Is it true you're not my Rick?"

 _Oh, Jesus._ "It doesn't matter, baby. It doesn't matter." He kissed the flutter of her pulse, dizzy on the pheromones that pumped forth from her skin with every beat of her heart.

"But what if I want to be _your_ Summer?"

 _His_ Summer.

He snaked his free arm beneath her, curving long fingers possessively over the bone of her pelvis as he growled. "That's what you want?" He tugged at the hem of her pink cotton boyshorts, pulling them down under her oversized nightshirt. "You're sure?"

Summer gasped, squirming, but nodded, tilting her hips to assist his efforts. He circled her clit with his fingers, ruthlessly efficient, showing her that her pleasure had been at his fingertips all along. He kissed the base of her neck, where the slender muscle curved down to merge with her gently sloping shoulder, and his greedy teeth pressed into her flesh. "Mine?" He growled. "And no one else's?"

"Oh, fuck, Rick, _yes,_ " Summer gasped, her climax robbing her of breath. She squirmed, her smaller frame arching against him, hips rocking forward as her body bowed to present a more pleasing angle.

"Good girl." Rick freed his cock from its cotton confines and slid home with an exultant snarl, her inner walls gloriously wet and still quaking in the aftershocks of orgasm. Summer opened her mouth to wail his name and the hand he clamped over her lips still tasted of her essence; she bit down on his fingers and moaned. "My good girl." He held her hips and fucked up into her, admiring the way his cock looked as it disappeared into her nubile body; not at all surprised when he lasted only a fraction as long as he usually would. He was only human, after all.

She turned in his arms as he released her, the lazy, sticky slide of it a pleasure in itself - he shuddered when the hypersensitive tip of his dick slipped from her body. She looked as if she would like to stay, but his eyes watched the door.

"They'll be up soon." He warned.

Summer appeared somewhat bereft, but in true Sanchez fashion, covered up the emotion with sarcasm, rummaging in the side table. "Can I at least smoke a cigarette?"

Rick smirked. "Babygirl." She caught his eye, saw the affection in the razor's edge smirk. "Smoke as many as you want."

Cigarette smoke curled up to the peaked ceiling; a gauzy, insubstantial curtain to shield them from haggard reality for at least a few moments more. Ugliness to hide ugliness, stealing sweetness where they could. 

_The devil you know._


	6. Eat Me, Drink Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rick contracts vampirism, and his already limited self-control is mightily tested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom, sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams." - Bram Stoker 
> 
> "Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more." - Nikola Tesla

It was Jerry's fault, as most things were. For a moment Rick was almost grateful to Beth's eternally disappointing, walking, talking abandonment complex. The garage appeared disorganized to a layman, to be sure, but there was a method to his madness; a certain order amidst all the chaos. His filing system for various notes, artifacts and half-finished bits of tech required a blood alcohol level of at least 0.1 to even interpret, let alone follow to a specific destination on one of the rickety shelves.

Jerry, on the other hand, frequently possessed a blood alcohol level of zero. An outsider in a family of addicts, Jerry teetotaled his way to a balloon-popping early bedtime and was up bright and early most days, fiddling around in the kitchen in search of a breakfast somehow superior to Beth's pancakes. An unimaginative cook, he often settled on toast and reheated coffee left over from Summer's study binges the night before. But Jerry being Jerry, he liked his toast just a little bit darker than was favorable, as if there was some extra manly merit in the charred, acrid, jam-slathered slices. He just had to muck about with the toaster, had to assert his small bit of authority there in the morning hours, raising his flag on the formica between the fruit basket and the newspaper Beth had folded to the classified employment ads and covered in red pen circles for him to peruse. Had to prove that, in matters of quadruple-cooked bread, at least, he remained king of his castle - at least until Rick stalked forth from his lair, glowering. Snatching the pilfered screwdriver from Jerry's fumbling hands before he could break the modified Perfect Toaster, he slapped his ill-favored son-in-law across the face before returning to the garage and slamming the door.

Ferociously hungover, Rick jammed the screwdriver back into a box of random tools behind the door with one hand, rummaging with the other in his labcoat pocket for the hair of the dog that bit him. The origin, etymology and a syllable-by-syllable playback of the phrase running through his brain on a rusty repeat as it powered up for what would no doubt be a stimulating day; he was momentarily perplexed when, from within the shadows of the box, the proverbial dog bit his other hand.

For a moment his giant brain was at a standstill, cogs and wheels that turned constantly locked into place by the sensation of a tiny sliver piercing his sallow skin. Then he curled his fingers around the offending object, withdrawing it from the box though he knew already what lay in his palm. Scowling intensely, his mind lurched into high gear again, thoughts racing as he dropped the bloodied stake into a plastic specimen bag - which would have entailed a beautiful bit of hindsight, if Rick were the type of man to learn lessons. He turned his scowl to the large, crimson-stained splinter lodged in the heel of his hand, seeping dark blood - his own - from the base of his thumb.

"Fuuuck," he breathed softly, and prised the splinter carefully free with tweezers, placing it on a glass slide and under a microscope.

It could be nothing. It was probably nothing. He was a man of science, and refused to entertain the mystic even when it came calling. What Earth virus remained alive and viable after weeks without a host? What ancient and unrefined strain could bring down a Rick?

He lowered his eye to the scope, squinting to blot out extraneous light as his trained eye struggled to separate rigid wood cells from the rusty red wasteland of dead blood cells - and beneath it all, the barely mobile, somehow still multiplying individual strands of the virus.

For a long moment he could only stare, watching the cells on the slide mutate - _his_ cells, he reminded himself numbly, 57% genius and 32% bitterness and 11% grain alcohol, spilling over with wasted potential and Rickness and now, apparently, vampirism. They engaged in mitosis rapidly, and he swore, taking a stumbling step back from the scope and rubbing a hand over his eyes. The rate of growth was absurdly accelerated, faster than he could have guessed for such a minute factor of contamination. He fumbled for his flask, spinning its top off with nerveless fingers and raising it to his lips. The single-malt inside; his favorite; tasted like mud in his mouth. Still, he felt no different; only vaguely aware of the slow thud of his own heartbeat in his ears...

And then he smelled it. A warm, teasing aroma; distant at first; jerking his attention to the open garage door like a wolf scenting prey. He narrowed his eyes, scanning the bright, sunlit horizon beneath one shading hand to locate the tantalizing source; even as the trail grew stronger. He straightened, striding to the threshold; and the shimmering mirage of suburban sidewalk solidified into a parked cherry red car, a girl leaning against it, her back to him as she bent into the window, talking to the driver with a languid animation.

The curve of her hips, the soft curl of her russet ponytail as she twirled it around one finger, caught his eye and held it. He breathed in, lips slightly parted, and the scent on the air set his throat afire as if he was dying of thirst. In his mouth, his tongue probed at the salt-and-metal razor's edge of lengthening canines, and his jaw ached. _Ah, shit._

Red teased at the edges of his vision - bloody sunset, auburn hair, glinting flashy car pulling away - and he blinked, shaking his head to clear it and retreating into shadow as the girl approached.

"Hi," the summer-sweet voice greeted warmly, rolling over his aural nerves in a dulcet caress. Of course it was her. He was a fool to have thought for a moment it could be anyone... Even for a moment, anyone else. The sound poured over him like honey, her scent filling the space between in sweetness like an orchard cultivated in sin; and Rick Sanchez, creator and destroyer of worlds, _shivered_.

_Jesus._

"Summer." He greeted, not turning to face her; pretending to busy himself with the microscope. The slide trembled, cracked, and shattered in his hands; shards falling to the concrete floor. Excellent. More contaminant to concern himself with. 

"...Rick?" She asked softly, drawing too near. "Are you okay? Are you sick?" Green eyes wide with concern, she laid one hand, feather-light, on the sleeve of his lab coat.

He spun, eyes dark, flinching back from her touch. The thudding of her heartbeat had overtaken his own, a rush in his ears like the sea, a drumming in his skull calling forth all the selfish base darkness in him that he did such a subpar job of suppressing on an average day.

"F-fuck, Summer, fuck _off_ ," he snarled, jaw throbbing as he ripped the portal gun from his lab coat, fired it over his shoulder into the space behind himself and escaped from the garage.

The corridor in which he found himself was familiar, so much so that he quirked a wry sneer in the dark, already damned and knowing it. His veins howled for her, jaw aching to sink his teeth into soft flesh; and he knew with the intuition that was his constant guide and burden that he would have ripped her throat out if he had remained but one moment more.

He couldn't think, needed to sate the burning; the desperate thirst turning all his thoughts to red. Synthesizing an antidote in this state was an absurd proposition; laughable. A mostly functional alcoholic, the drive to drink was not an alien one, but this was a depth of passion that he thought might kill him if left unchecked, or simply drive him mad. Impulse control had never been Rick's strongest point, and the primeval fever in his blood stripped all his resistance bare.

But some part of him, the part of his brain clinging to rationality, knew he couldn't hurt the girl. Not Summer.

Not _his_ Summer.

The delicate, tantalizing fragrance calling to him from behind the thin bedroom door was the same, just the same. He swallowed, teeth - ** _fangs_** , _call them what they are,_ his scientific mind sneered - pricking his lower lip. Without thought, as if in a dream, his hand found the door and opened it.

Summer - _this_ dimension's Summer - was lounging on her bed, phone in her hands, hair loose and spilling over her shoulder in soft ruddy waves. She sat up when she saw him, sitting back on her knees, setting the phone aside as she frowned curiously at him. "Rick? You ok?"

He said nothing, merely shut the door; leaning against it and staring down at her through hooded eyes, using his height to disguise the way he reached back and locked the door behind himself. He approached the bed, the lines of him long and predatory as he knelt, leaned toward her; and Summer scrambled back from him, surprised - but not as quickly as she really should have. Rick gripped a heavy fistful of her rich auburn hair at the base of her skull, tilting her head back with fingers tight on her jaw as he pulled her closer.

"Rick?" She whimpered, a little breathless, staring wide-eyed into his dilated pupils with something like fear in her own. "What's going on? What did I-"

He silenced her soft, mobile lips with his own, kissing her hard, using his hand on her face to demand she yield and open to him. She stiffened with a whine, pressing both her hands hard on his thin chest as if she would shove him off, and then abruptly dug her nails into his flesh, gripping the fabric of his shirt in two tight fists and pinioning him to herself in a death grip. Her heart hammered in her chest, loud in his ears as a thunderstorm, and Rick growled low in his throat, pressing her back to the bed beneath him. Her thighs parted easily and she wrapped her legs around his hips as if she'd only been waiting for him to get close enough to ensnare him. As if she were the predator, and he the prey. Poor girl.

She finally broke the kiss with a gasp, tilting her head back, the column of her throat long and tempting - pink, white, summer-gold. There was a tiny cut on her lower lip, the new sharpness of his teeth and his ruthless lust in evidence. He kissed her again, sucking fiercely on the ruby gleam highlighting the plump curve; uttering a low groan at the taste of her blood in his mouth. Summer whimpered, squirming, grinding up against him; and him hard as diamond between her thighs. Her head dropped back on the pillow, baring her throat to him, and even as his lips brushed her skin Rick cursed aloud, words a yearning hiss.

"Ah, f-fuck, _fuck!_ "

That throat was so fragile, the girl it belonged to entirely mortal and reliant entirely on his supposed good judgment and restraint. Her scent was dizzying, the copper-floral-heat of her blood on the air making it hard to think, hard to breathe, the edges of his vision turning crimson once again. He shut his eyes, gripping her waist tight in stiff fingers to attempt control; but when she wriggled beneath him, fingers aggressively jerking his belt buckle loose, he let her. Teenage flexibility and eagerness made all the decisions for him as he waited a long heartbeat, two; eyes dark and fangs gleaming in the low lamplight and trembling with the effort of a more human patience. Could she see, in the dim ambiance, that he wasn't quite her own Rick? Could she see the monster his carelessness had made him into?  
  
_My, grandpa, what big teeth you have._  
  
_All the better to eat you with, my dear._

Summer licked her palm, a little smear of blood from her cut lip mixing with slick saliva, and without preamble slid her hand between their bodies and her snug grip over the head of his cock. Eyes widening, Rick thrust into her touch, choking on the admonition that rose to his lips.

"J- _Jesus Christ_ , Summer," and now it was his turn to bare his throat, eyes rolling heavenward as she angled her pelvis to take him and he slid, inch by slow inch, into her throbbing heat. He clamped his jaw shut, ignoring the ache, ignoring everything, hips beginning their primal rhythm with a rolling snap that buried him in her body to the hilt and made her mewl beautifully. Her nubile body tried to echo the movement, undulating like silk, and he snarled; pinning her wrists above her with one long hand. He wrapped the greedy fingers of his free hand around her thigh, hitching her knee over his shoulder, and Summer keened at the depth of the angle as he rocked into her with long, deep thrusts.

"F-fuck, Summer," he groaned, a condemned man. "I c-can't..."

It was easy, fucking her. Her body molded to his like clay, all youthful responsiveness and eagerness to please. She had resisted him hardly at all, from the moment he stepped through the door, instead melting beneath his every advance like gold in a smelter - he wondered if she even knew who he really was, knew what he was there for. If she even cared. That true Sanchez talent for self-destruction. Thinking about it made his jaw ache and his balls draw up tight. It was too natural, too fucking _good_ \- an inadequate distraction from her carotid artery pumping away just inches from his lips, filling his head with pheromones and yearning. She tilted her jaw at a higher angle, eyes squeezed shut as she panted and her inner muscles began to flutter around his cock.

"Fuck, Rick, _please_ don't stop!" She whimpered, flushed from cheeks to collarbone and as desperate as he'd ever heard her. "Fuck, oh fuck, _yes!_ "

He felt his own orgasm zinging down his spine at the pleading tone in her voice, her breathless begging tapering off in a wail that pulled his release from him as surely as a siren song. He growled, pressing her hips down hard, thrusting deep and spilling his seed inside her. Marking territory, not that it would matter. As she went limp in his arms, sated and dazed, he lifted her with one arm behind her back. One hand brushed, with infinite tenderness, the hair out of her face, away from soft green eyes. He stroked gentle fingertips over the curve of her cheekbone, encouraging her to close them; then sank his teeth into her throat.

Much later, he settled the still form on her pillow, disheveled, desecrated, a white and silent monument to depredation. His sensitive ears detected a faint heartbeat - or at least, he told himself he did. The green light carried him to his home dimension and he did not look back.


	7. Eyes On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer needs an older escort for an exclusive event, but the course of an evening out never did run smooth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.” - Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
> 
> "Science does not know its debt to imagination." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Summer knelt on her bed, feet tucked under her in the oversized tee and panties she had worn to sleep in; cell phone in one hand, embossed square of plastic in the other. She bit her lip, frowning slightly as she looked from one item to the other, replaying the scene she had just left in the living room.

"Where's Grandpa Rick?" Her younger brother had poked his head up from the other side of the sofa like a groundhog from its burrow, fully prepared to declare six more weeks of winter. "Aw, geez Summer, w-why?" The younger teen asked with some trepidation, pressing the "pause" button on his video game.

"I need him." Summer bit off loftily, as if it were none of Morty's concern; ignoring the way the boy stared at her quizzically. "Where is he?"

"He, uh, h-he's sleeping- Summer! S-summer, he said n-not to...!"

Summer ignored her brother's plaintive yelps from the living room as she strode past him and to the hall closet that the manic genius patriarch of the family had made his lair. Jerking the door open with a huff, she saw to her complete lack of surprise that said manic genius patriarch was sprawled on his cot, facedown, illustriously drunk. "Fucking fantastic." She cursed under her breath, and turned to stomp back up the stairs to her room, fluffy robe and slippers doing nothing to conceal her ire.

So now she sat in her bedroom, back to square one and faced with a decision. She stared hard at the keycard in her hand, biting her lip and trying to quiet the heavy fluttering in her abdomen. She could still hear the directive, spoken in his irritable rasp.

_And the next time you decide to have a stand-in fuck you in my workshop, make sure it's a real Rick. I don't have time to clean up after other people's unfinished business._

The needs she had in mind were a little more basic; less primal, more social. Everyone who was anyone in the local scene was going to be attending the new club's VIP cold open, but it was an exclusive event and her usual fake ID wasn't going to fool a real professional bouncer. She needed a real adult to get her in, maybe even show her a good time for once.

She needed a _Rick_. But hers was slumbering away downstairs, sleeping the sleep of the unjust with a substance abuse problem.

Coming to a decision, she slipped her feet back into her slippers, leaving the robe behind so she could easily squeeze down the hatch, and slipped downstairs and into the garage, headed for the triple-authentication security hub that guarded the entrance to the Phoenix Lab.

She squinted in the dark, first punching in a 5-digit code - the alphanumeric keys lit up when she punched, in sequence, "B-A-L-L-S." She then swiped the card, and the hub was illuminated with a green light as a panel slid up, revealing a glass plate with a lens behind it. This was the moment of truth - if Rick had actually intended for her to use the lab, her retinal patterns would be added to the whitelist and the hatch would open. If he hadn't, she'd probably be blinded. Holding her breath and thinking of mojitos and a place in the upper social echelon, she lowered her eye to the lens.

"Scanning..." The security bot informed her politely. "...Summer Smith. Welcome." For ostensibly non-sentient artificial intelligence, it seemed a little surprised to see her. But the hatch slid open, revealing the chilly gloom of the lab below.

Like a morgue. Summer thought before she could stop herself, and then cursed herself roundly for staying up all night watching low-budget horror as she descended the ladder.

When her feet touched the white tile floor, the lights came on of their own accord, casting the sterile environment into sharp relief. Summer raised her hand with a little cry of surprise at the sudden brightness, shielding her eyes till they adjusted enough to look around and take stock of her surroundings. The lab had been properly cleaned and upgraded since Rick's last visit and subsequent tantrum down here; it was obvious he'd been busy. Two pods sat empty; awaiting specimens. One held a specimen similar in age to herself; she barely glanced at it. Not what she was looking for. The pod nearest to herself held a Rick that was an exact copy of her own, right down to the scar in his side and the faint lines that, even in repose, permanent bitterness and derision had etched into his face.

He was in suspended animation, the clear liquid surrounding his nude form - she stared openly, all hungry eyes and flaming cheeks - holding his body weightless along with the cables that supplied nutritive supplements and electrical stimulus for his enormous brain and lean muscle. She allowed herself a moment, green eyes tracing the silvered hair that trailed down his abdomen in a thin but tempting line... It was likely she would never be allowed to see him so naked - literally and figuratively - again. Finding the control panel that connected to the pod, she initiated the activation sequence. It was far simpler than she assumed it would be. Rick really favored a point-and-click sort of design style.

The vital liquid drained from the pod through a hole in its base, cables snapping free from the cloned Rick's skin as their purposes, one by one, were served; they hung loose in the pod like vines as he dropped to one knee, seemingly quavering on unsteady legs. Thick hair hung in wet, unruly spikes around his face as he bent over, gasping. Summer rushed to the pod, taking a large blue towel that had been left helpfully folded on a nearby shelf in her arms and pulling the lever to open the pod's sealed glass door. The great egg opened with a hiss and the Rick inside lurched forward, gasping in great lungfuls of air, and then suddenly coughed out a curse.

" _Fuck_ , Summer, what the fuck happened?"

"What? I- How do you know...?" She trailed off, handing him the towel and glancing away, red-faced as he stood up, still gloriously nude and wet.

" _Everything?_ Cognitive upload, Summer, _duh_ ," he mumbled, tousling his hair with the towel till it stood out in its customary spikes and ignoring her discomfort. "You think I'm just gonna let some clone take over my life without putting my consciousness in it first? _Jeez_." Finally noting her scarlet cheeks, he slung the towel around his hips, smirking arrogantly. "So what happened to my other body?"

"Um, nothing. You're asleep upstairs." She mumbled, looking at her feet.

"What?" He rounded on her, all height and menace. "You wasted a clone for jollies, what the _hell_ Summer?"

"What?” She spluttered, hands on her hips as she stood nose to nose with him. “You’re the one who gave me the key, you told me to come down here if I needed a f-... If I...”

“If you needed a _what?_ ” The seminude Rick demanded, leaning into her space, glowering.

Summer took a deep breath. “The original you... Look he just told me to come down here if I needed a f-fuck, okay? You gave me the key.” She waved it in front of his nose as proof; such a precious item would have been near-impossible to steal or replicate.

Rick raised both brows in a long, heavily silent moment of surprise, then let out a harsh, barking laugh. “I’m a sick fucker.” Even as the words left his lips, however, he snaked an arm around her waist, cool damp skin through her nightshirt growing warm against her own. Her thighs shifted as she squirmed against him in surprise and she felt his cock twitch under the towel in definite interest. _Ah, fuck._

“No no, I-”

“No?” He raised a brow, wolfish, and she was reminded powerfully of that moment in the garage, the heat and the hunger and the powerlessness of it all. _Should we just pretend that I don't know?_

Summer shivered, blinking a few times to clear the memory from her mind and attempt unsuccessfully to steady herself. “There’s this party-”

“ _Si, en mis pantalones_ ,” Rick snickered, unable to help himself, then glanced down. “In a manner of speaking.” He punctuated the juvenile humor with a very adult snap of his hips against hers.

Summer gasped, but plowed on, determined nonetheless. “No, it’s at this club. In the city. It’ll be fun.” Rick was eyeing the curve of her neck, tuning her out, wondering where would be the best spot to sink his teeth in to get her to make that breathy moan he liked - and then she said the magic words. “There’s an open bar...”

He straightened up regretfully, still holding her tight but with a wry smirk that pulled at one corner of his mouth like a fishhook dragging him to shore. “Well... I guess we could make an appearance.”

Summer backed up a step, thrumming from head to toe but victorious. “Awesome. Wait... Can you drive the space car?”

“Ugh, yeah, _Summer_ , I built it.”

 

* * * * * * *

 

Summer skittered about in her bedroom, knocking over bottles and tubes on her vanity dresser as she tried to apply makeup with trembling hands. She had, for all intents and purposes, defied Rick by waking one of his counterparts from sedentary slumber for a date. The possibility for repercussions were literally infinite. But even as one dire prediction after another flicked through her mind like scrolling through a webpage, she had difficulty focusing on them. Instead her thoughts were on the heat of Rick's hands on her skin as she shimmied into her red satin cocktail dress and pulled her hair into a quick, casually disheveled up-do and slicked on red lipstick and winged black eyeliner and mascara. Her heels she left for last, holding them in her hand along with her phone and small clutch as she tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out through the garage; having used the same escape tactic many times throughout her coming of age. Even after the arrival of her household's new de facto leader, Rick was far more tolerant of her late-night wanderings than her parents ever would have been, a fact that Summer had never failed to appreciate.

He certainly appeared tolerant now, waiting by the ship with his flask in one hand and a cigarette in the other; wasting no time whatsoever in inundating this new body with all the toxic habits to which the old one - still passed out under the stairs, incidentally - was accustomed. Summer's jaw dropped for a moment when she spotted him but she shut it again, trying for all the world to not appear like the gawky teenager that she still, ever-so-slightly, in quiet, secret moments, really was.

Rick cleaned up well. He'd either located, replicated or outright stolen a sharp black suit, excellently tailored; clinging to the long lines of his body in all the right places; pale pinstripes accentuating the lean planes and angles of him. When she got close, under the wan glow of the streetlight, she could see that the faint ash-colored lines were not simple pinstripes at all, but the text " **f u c k y o u** " printed over and over in repeating lines down the fabric. _Definitely a Rick original._ She smirked, straightening his electric blue tie as he tucked the ever-present flask into his breast pocket and blatantly admired her decolletage.

"Nice suit."

"Nice dress."

She blushed, a little; it was unusual of Rick to be so free with compliments, and she wondered just how much like him this copy really was. Ninety percent? Eighty? Sixty-five?

 _I guess I'll find out._ She thought, squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw a little stubbornly, climbing into the ship's passenger seat.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Some things never changed. Upon their arrival, Rick was suddenly nowhere to be seen - a ghost, vanishing into the crowd as soon as his purpose was fulfilled; slipping her past security with a tight roll of bills slipped into the bouncer's hand and the practiced ease of someone who has done such a thing many times before. Summer did her best to not feel a little put out, standing on her own in a crowd of people, feeling the weight of passing eyes on her like the prick of so many small, judgmental needles. Straightening her back, she tucked her clutch under one arm and wove her way through the crowd, headed for the bar.

Though she'd occasionally sampled alcohol in her parents' home or on adventures with her brother and grandfather, Summer's experience with cocktails was somewhat limited. She decided to stick with what she knew, thus avoiding embarrassment, and ordered in a bored tone that mimicked the venerated alcoholic who had brought her here: "Vodka martini."

The bartender raised an eyebrow but didn't question; the music was too loud to allow for much in the way of conversation and it was the bouncer's job to check for young women in slinky red dresses who were below the legal drinking age. He shook the drink in a steel tumbler with crushed ice and strained it, with a flourish, into a conical glass. Sliding it across the bar to her, he dropped in a lemon twist - unusual, compared to the classic olive, but this was a trendy spot and Summer appreciated the gesture.

"Thanks." She accepted the drink and sipped it gratefully, burn of vodka and vermouth soothed by the chill of the liquor as it slid down her throat. A martini was not a warm-up drink; like a cosmopolitan or a bay breeze, something to be enjoyed with girlfriends around a karaoke machine. Martinis were for going from zero to sixty; the burn in her belly heating her up from the inside, making her cheeks flush. The lemon twist sitting alone and forlorn in the bottom of the glass, she slid it across the bar, raising her hand for another.

"Damn, girl, you in a hurry?" The bartender asked, mixing the second round even more promptly than the first.

"Something like that," she muttered, and took the glass, drinking it as she wandered away from the bar, eyes scanning the club. She had come here to see and be seen; and she noted a few students from the community college pointing her out and whispering behind hands, subtle covetous eyes and intrigue in the angle of their youthful bodies as they leaned toward her when she passed. Doubtless she could mingle, make a few connections, have a good time. But the heavy bass was throbbing through her in time with her heartbeat, the bitterness of spirits on her tongue making her mouth water for something... else. Something more crepuscular; hidden and fragile, forbidden. Underage drinking was par for the course. Now the wool had been pulled from her eyes, she could not put it back.

The crowd parted for her subtly, like fish disturbed by the presence of a brooding predator, sensing danger but unable to determine with any accuracy its prowling source. She ascended a short, wrought-iron staircase, the club's baroque pretenses confused by the presence of illuminated violet and emerald panel lights and the glass-block bar. At the top of the staircase was a velvet rope, intended to keep out intruders, like herself. Finishing her drink, she set down the glass on the metal stair with a crystalline clink, the sound somehow definite and resolved against the thud of bass against her back. Lifting one black kitten heel after the other, swaying a little with vertigo as her solitary ankle wobbled on the staircase, she stepped over the barrier and into the shadowy lounge.

The music was softer here, muffled by the lower ceiling and the art-deco architecture of the room, the far wall rounded like an egg. The floor was carpeted in plush, deep crimson and the walls were painted a deep, visceral magenta, the ceiling white. But all this she took in in the space of a heartbeat, the time it took her to blink, her pupils to dilate and contract; an involuntary parting of her lips as she _saw_ him.

There was no one in the room but him, a dim light from a lone ceiling sconce illuminating the fine black suit and moonlight hair and every drunk, smirking, condescending line of him. He sat dead center on a small white sofa, thighs parted proudly as if he were a king astride his throne, arms thrown over the back in an expansive slouch. The brilliant blue tie was absent, no doubt lost amongst the revelers, and his blazer hung open, the black linen shirt beneath it unbuttoned to the navel. That same silver trail of hair that had so tantalized her earlier caught her eye again now, the barest whisper above his belt buckle. A highball of whiskey dangled in one hand, suspended in the laconic grip of thin fingers seemingly by magic, liquid swirling ever so slightly - the only thing that revealed he was not a magnificent statue, a monument to debauchery.

"Was wondering when you'd show up." Rick drawled, tip of his tongue running over his teeth as he sneered at her.

Summer's hand pressed to her abdomen unconsciously, trying to still her stomach as it flipped over, quiet her heart hammering away behind her ribs. He'd been expecting her. Of course he had. He... He had seen everything, knew everything, was a genius, _some kind of fucked-up god_. Abruptly, like someone had opened an airlock, she couldn't breathe.

"Drink?" He tilted the glass forward approximately one millimeter in welcome, and she was stumbling forward, suddenly coltish legs unwilling to obey her commands, unsteady on five-inch heels and two strong drinks. She halted just before his chair, attempting imperious and achieving only awkward, staring down at him with eyes that seemed to glow in the single spotlight. She snatched the glass from his hand, silent in bravado, and gulped it down before she could reflect on how much she truly loathed the taste of whiskey, or what a genuinely awful idea it was for a fairly amateur alcoholic to mix clear and dark liquor on a night out. None of it mattered if she could wipe that self-satisfied smirk off Rick's face.

Yet the smirk persisted. He stared up at her from beneath lazily raised brows, one lock of tousled silver hair falling into cool grey eyes. Setting the glass down on a brushed steel table, ostentatious and stylistically vague, that rested nearby, Summer pressed her hands into Rick's shoulders, bracing her weight and catching him off-guard for the first time as she slipped, with almost casual ease, into his lap. He covered neatly, bringing long hands up to sweep over her strong thighs, to cup in his splayed and greedy fingers the ripe curve of her ass.

"Yeah, babygirl, that's it." He smirked, confident drawl back again. "Give Daddy some sugar."

Summer scoffed, reaching up to pull her hair free from its confines, letting it tumble down her back, presenting him with a fascinating vantage point as she did so. "You're not my Daddy."

"Baby," Rick sneered, nuzzling between her breasts with warm lips and a hot knowing chuckle against her skin, "We both know _that's_ bullshit."

She shivered, carding her fingers through his thick hair, scraping her nails down his neck, gripping his collar and pulling him tighter against her skin. Perhaps if she pulled hard enough she could pull him into her, under her skin, past her creaking ribs, let him devour her heart and fill her up and take the place of all that dark emptiness inside her.

_Summer, I've always loved you!_

_Yep._

She rolled her hips, gripping his suit for leverage and grinding down hard. Rick grinned, kissing her roughly as he slid one long hand with its nimble fingers up her back and pulled the zipper of her dress down, down, down; the purring drag against her spine interminable and erotic. He peeled the dress off her like peeling the skin from some lush fruit, letting the silky material pool at her hips, palms skimming over her trembling sides, sliding over her ribs. He pressed his hands between her shoulderblades, drawing her close, pressing his face between her breasts and inhaling deeply and she smelled like sweat and lemon and the alcohol already seeping through her pores, and all at once he was hard as concrete in the expensive trousers. _Good goddamn._

He muttered something against her skin, a growling rasp that she couldn't discern beneath the pounding music and her howling nerves demanding attention. "W-what?" She whined, squirming, desperate to increase the friction though she was already wet and utterly ruined.

_"Touch yourself."_

Summer whimpered, biting her lip, hands trembling as they clung to his much-abused lapel. One hand still splayed between her shoulderblades, the other wrapped around her wrist, bearing it inexorably lower. Then he closed his lips over her nipple, tip of his wicked tongue darting out to flicker over the sensitive pink bud as he stole a generous mouthful of luscious youth, and Summer stopped thinking. Her hips bucked involuntarily, a harsh grind against the hard ridge of him in his pants, as she slid her hand over the soft, warm quaver of her belly and curled fingers into her ginger curls. Her panties were flimsy black lace nothings, barely there to begin with; and if she had wondered before if she'd worn them for him, she now knew with a certainty as she tugged them impatiently aside, stretching the delicate fabric carelessly beyond repair and thrusting eagerly swirling fingertips into her heat. "Oh, f-fuck, jesus, Rick..."

He didn't need a hand to hold her any longer; her craving for his touch was will enough to stay fixed in place (a theme that played itself over and over again on repeat between them, like a worn-out tape). The hand between her shoulderblades went lax, slyly sliding around her waist, up her thigh, to where his cock strained beneath her tender, bitten-lipped ministrations. With the practiced flick of one hand, he had his belt and trousers open, and wrapping his hand bruisingly tight around her thigh, he dragged her forward to thrust roughly against her, the thick head of his cock nudging her clit as she rocked her hips down.

 _"Ohh_ fuck Rick my fucking _god_ please don't stop," she whined, on the verge of total incoherence as she babbled, losing all semblance of rhythm or seductive guile when his naked cock touched her. She bowed into him like a willow in the rain, scent of whiskey on her breath as she mewed and panted, clinging to him.

She'd begged him not to stop, but it would have been more accurate to beg him not to move - to remain still, as he was, only occasionally rising up to meet her in shallow thrusts, or licking the beads of sweat that gathered in the hollow of her throat; as she frigged herself desperately on the head of his cock. It was helplessly scintillating, the girl shattering all of her own accord, her hot little pussy spasming and bathing his cock in her essence; ruining his suit and her reputation with a wail that the revelers below may have heard were it not for an exceptionally well-timed bass drop.

She came around slowly, blinking till his image came into focus, and when she did her throbbing sex immediately clenched in anticipation, a wave of heat prickling over her skin. The smirk was back.

"My turn."

In a movement so smooth it belied his years, Rick pressed her back into the sofa, entering her fully and pulling her thighs up to his ribs to increase the depth of his thrusts. He set a punishing pace, and Summer tried to shut her eyes, to let the coiling low in her belly carry her up again.

"Oh, no you don't," he rasped. "Eyes on me."

She locked her gaze on his, eyes wide, and almost immediately his rhythm hesitated and broke. "S-shit, jesus." He swore, but held the gaze, pupils so blown they were nearly black, biting his lip hard. She dragged her nails down his back, digging them in sharply, and he grunted, cock hammering home inside her and pulsing as he came. Summer melted, feeling an answering throb, feeling another climax pulled from her exhausted body in the form of a long, slow burn; a rolling wave.

"That's my girl." He said affectionately, at long last, slapping her flank as he slid out of her and sat up. He pulled his clothes back on and for the first time she noticed he was well and truly disheveled, having gone commando and missing both cufflinks in addition to the tie. Such details seemed insignificant in comparison to the rubbery, wrung-out feeling in her limbs. She had lost her clutch and her phone. Neither mattered. She dragged her panties down her legs and dropped them, discarded detritus, beside the now-infamous white couch. Placing her hand in his, she allowed herself to be led like the conquest she was; down the stairs, through the club, out the back door, to the secluded corner of the parking lot where they had left the cloaked ship.

And there, in the back seat, unconscious and bound but otherwise unharmed, was _Rick_.

Her eyes snapped to her companion, who had lately had his prick inside her. "R-Rick?"

He sneered. "What, like I'm going to let this asshole tag in for me? I thought we discussed this already, Sum-Sum - _accept no substitutes_."

And suddenly, it all made sense.

The Rick in the back - unconscious Rick, that is - was bound hand and foot with duct tape, but an electric blue tie gagged him - the same one that had been so conspicuously absent earlier. He wore only boxers and socks; his tall, underfed form had been stripped bare...

 _ **C-137**_. Of course.

"Jesus fucking christ, Rick," she muttered, too exhausted from the alcohol and the adrenaline and the endorphines to even contemplate the matter. "What the fuck."

"Who's your Daddy, baby?" He smirked, sliding into the driver's seat and powering up the ship that would carry them home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of Summer Sweet: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11892690/chapters/26862714
> 
> The two works complement each other but can be read alone.


	8. Corrosive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything he touches, he destroys. Even the beautiful things. 
> 
> Especially the beautiful things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> corrosive: _(adj)_ having the quality of corroding or eating away; erosive. harmful or destructive; deleterious. sharply sarcastic; caustic.
> 
> "You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go." - Vladimir Nabokov, _Lolita_

Rick heard the footsteps approaching - through the kitchen, down the short hall - before his sanctum was breached, and barely blinked in acknowledgment of the intrusion. These days, intrusion was more the rule than the exception; with Jerry back in his accustomed position at not-quite the head of the table. What an epic miscalculation, letting him walk back into their lives... Into _his_  life. The crack he had left open for the little parasite to squirm under was barely the width of a hair, but squirm he had. It was what he was good at - exploiting all of Rick's mistakes and weaknesses through sheer, willful stupidity.

Speaking of weaknesses... He smelled her shampoo before he spotted her, the toe of one canvas shoe - no sock, glittering anklet - pushing the door open, her gleaming eyes in the hallway scanning the garage for danger; cautious gaze preceding before the rest of her followed. She sidled in, all long legs in short white denim cutoffs, a pink tank clinging to her skin like the suggestion of a shirt. The top was a flimsy thing, sheer and diaphanous with delicate straps running like an afterthought over the slope of her shoulders, barely-there, a thin line of lightly tanned belly showing above the snap of her shorts.

"Hey Rick," she announced her presence, a russet-and-cream invitation sent to the wrong mailbox, still standing just outside his field of vision. He flicked his eyes to her, then back to his work, the migraine threatening between furrowed brows stoked by irritation or the heat or both. She sipped something from a red solo cup, lips pursed and cheeks hollowing vigorously around a straw. Paused, swallowed, lowered the cup - lips shining a little red with the sticky-sweet dye of whatever she'd been drinking. "Whatcha doing?"

"Recalibrating the supernovic combustion chamber in my ship's engine, _Summer_ , why? You need help finding the rest of your shirt or something?" The new-and-improved Beth - lately divorced, now planning a lavish renewal of her rushed courthouse vows - had been making some recent upgrades to her teenage daughter's wardrobe that Rick was not entirely sure he approved of. Then again, he was not entirely sure he did not.

He wasn't sure which was worse. With a final twist, the engine purred to life, systems running optimally once again. Setting down his calibration device, which looked like a cross between a screwdriver and a laser pistol and contained the battery from Jerry's electric toothbrush, Rick pulled his flask from his coat and took a long swig, crossing his arms and leaning impatiently against his workbench.

It was always like this, biting irritability in response to even the most positively intended of overtures. He used the enormity of his intelligence as an ivory tower, an impenetrable fortress that no one could reach - or would even want to. It was better that way. Summer bit her lip, tugging a little self-consciously at the hem of her shirt, which only served to make it dip lower over the swell of her breasts. Giving up, she heaved an exasperated sigh, flipping his lab coat over the passenger side door of the space car to make room for her restless haunches as she leaned against the smoothly sloping side. The straw made a hollow rasp as she reached the bottom of the cup, and she set it aside with a grimace. "Where's Morty? Shouldn't you guys be off on one of your _super_ adventures?" The words emerged from her red-sweet lips in a drawling lisp, sarcasm crippling. Fortunately, Rick had invented the maneuver and sidestepped its caustic heat easily.

He shrugged, attempting to convey disinterest rather than scathing contempt. Morty's latest betrayal cut deep. He was accustomed to the boy getting bored, wandering off, consistently choosing the mundane over his own paltry offerings - a bitter old man on an adventure to nowhere. But hid grandson's deliberate subterfuge in the matter of Jerry's coup chapped his ass just a little too harshly for an average-sized grudge; and the customary silent treatment had proven ineffective on not only Morty, but the family as a whole. The three of them - the happy couple, and their shy and awkward son - seemed to exist in a sunny bubble that was separate and distinct from himself, his reality. Rickless. It made him a little queasy.

Only Summer seemed immune to the kool-aid. She presented only with the symptoms of adolescence - just as detached and disillusioned as ever; perhaps a little more so; shunning the more favorable company, the social grooming going on in the living room, and seeking him out instead in this cold outpost, last bastion of human interaction in the Smith-Sanchez household.

"He's busy." He grunted, and after a moment's hesitation, frown creasing his brow like a blink, there-and-gone, offered her his flask. Brushed steel, dented and bearing the sheen of long use, rested between his long fingers like a dueling glove.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Summer nevertheless hesitated on the precipice of this, a trespass into the holiest of holies. Consumption of alcohol aside - she was seventeen, of course, and not socially _dead_ \- drinking from Rick's flask was equivalent to trespassing upon one of his experiments in progress, or watching him sleep. Placing her lips on the narrow mouthpiece... Where his had lately been.

"Don't overthink it, kid." Rick grunted harshly, tilting the flask forward a little aggressively so the contents sloshed hollowly against the side. Without further ado about nothing, Summer swiped the canister from his hand and, unscrewing the cap with a swift deft flick that must have been hereditary, took a deep swallow... And promptly choked. Her normally pleasing face contorted in a grimace of distaste, she clamped her lips shut and with a herculean effort swallowed the vile stuff. A moment later she was eyeing him over the smooth curve of the flask as she forced down another sip - the _balls_ on this one - before handing it back to him. Her fingers twitched at her side, as if reaching longingly for the - now empty, of course - red solo cup. Finally, she raised her wrist to her lips and scrubbed them vigorously, leaving a sheen of lip gloss on her bare skin when she lowered her slender arm again. "Not too bad."

Rick chuckled dryly, taking the flask from her nerveless fingers as she struggled to swallow down the bitter liquid, well aware of how foul it tasted. To be honest he wasn't drinking it for the taste - he had upgraded his usual rotation of single-malts to a positively foul rotgut in honor of the occasion and if he was speaking frankly it was disgusting by interplanetary standards. But she'd swallowed it down and kept her composure about as well as could be expected - he was almost proud.

The idea came upon him subtly, like the whisper of smoke reminding him he'd been craving a cigarette - a wouldn't that became a shouldn't that became a will. Strictly speaking, he only had standing consent to drag Morty across the galaxy and through dimensions on adventures - but far be it from Rick Sanchez to ask permission from anyone, for anything, ever. He eyed her up and down, as if measuring her capability or sizing her for an escape pod - either was equally likely.

"Sure," he affirmed in the blandest of tones, pocketing his portal gun and a few other personal effects and tossing what seemed like a random assortment of garage detritus into the space car's boot. He opened the hatch and clambered in, folding long legs and doubling up his lanky frame. "Get in, kid, let's go for a ride."

Summer gaped for a moment, before replacing her expression with something a little less incredulous and - hopefully - a little more cool. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, get in." Rick replied, not bothering to look at her as he flipped switches and dials and felt the hovering craft hum to life beneath him. There was a reason he'd built this first, his first serious project since becoming earthbound once again. A reason he'd been willing to build it out of trash, so much scavenged detritus previously decorating the pristine, glittering off-white suburban curbside. There was no cure for claustrophobia as effective as feeling the vibrations of a post-combustion engine beneath one's feet - the ability to, in straits dire or otherwise, simply up and fly away. Once man tastes the sky, he cannot be compelled under any circumstances to remain bound to the ignoble earth.

Her fuzzy warmth - an auburn haze at the edge of his vision, occupied by ostensibly more important things - slid into the seat beside him, and he heard the seatbelt click. "So you wanna talk about what's bothering you?"

"Jeez Summer, what are you; my therapist?" Rick sneered, punching coordinates into the ship's computer and steering it out of the driveway and into the darkening sky. "I'm fine; just tired of hanging around with the fuckin'... Fuckin' Brady Bunch." He hiccuped quietly, making an expression of distaste; but his hand on the steering column remained steady. He carded long fingers through his hair with an exasperated sigh.

Summer frowned into her lap, plucking at her shirt. "...Yeah. I get it. It'd be nice if mom would at least pretend to care about my opinion." She sneered, his own derisive snarl softened on her young face. "But I guess I won't stop her from trying to buy me off."

"You- you gotta cut your mom some slack," he commented halfheartedly. Beth was his daughter, so he supposed it was expected of him to defend her abysmal and belated attempts at mothering; but to be honest he couldn't be bothered. Summer's wardrobe was of little interest to him, save the way her smooth, firm thighs had looked as she climbed into the passenger seat; and her relationship with her mother of about equivalent regard. "She's trying."

"Whatever." The teen huffed, slim mobile shoulders turned a little away from him as she glared out the window beneath Sanchez trademark furrowed brows. Speaking frankly, he couldn't agree more with her assessment. After a long silence, the most comfortable moment they'd shared since she climbed aboard - why had he thought this was a good idea? - she slit her eyes, glancing at him from beneath lowered lashes. "It's not her, is it... She's gone, isn't she?" The new and improved Beth, revitalized thanks to her recent adventures and romantic reawakenings, was a little _too_ ambitious, a little too eager to please. The mother she knew and occasionally could be said to love was detached, constantly writing off her failings as a side effect of stress, wishing herself away. Since their family reunion, Beth had been lively, cheerful, and affectionate - traits that did not apply to a human being with that much Rick in them. Her suspicions only grew with the older man's deep and stubborn reticence.

Rick sighed, mouth dry somehow though he felt a little drunk; craving to polish off what was left of his flask and stop for another drink somewhere, literally anywhere - and maybe leave the girl behind. It was in his nature, to wriggle out of the tough questions. Smartest man in the universe, with literally all the answers - he just didn't want to offer up any of them.

The ship's computer saved him, or at least offered a lapse in the prolonged quiet where his taciturn glare in profile was excusable by preoccupation. He flipped the switch from autopilot to manual, and guided the small craft in for a gentle bump of a landing on a strip lit by inlaid phosphorescent patterns. It looked like a mosaic, incandescent and iridescent geometry repeating in ever-expanding concentric circles across the transport hub. Looking across the horizon; the city lit up the sky in much the same way, a glimmering gem of breathtaking color carved directly into the planet's crust, which seemed comprised entirely of glossy black volcanic rock. The air was very still, chilly and thin but breathable.

"Welcome to Halcyon 9." Rick muttered, and opened the ship's hatch on the passenger side; hoping that a somewhat dramatic entrance would distract the girl's attention. Classic Sanchez - distract, defer, dismiss. He leaned against the cooling ship in a poor imitation of casual ease; ruffled and a little startled when Summer snaked her arm under his to pickpocket his labcoat and swipe his flask for herself. _Well, she's earned it._ He scowled - she had, and in true Sanchez fashion at that; half wits and half deceit. Caught him off guard while his giant brain was scrambling, running on the hamster wheel of her impossible question.

_She's gone, isn't she?_

_Does it matter?_ He wanted to ask, flinging an arm out to indicate with his ever-present flair for the dramatic the vast cosmos behind them. Did anything matter in all that vastness? How was one copy, one variation, one genetically identical duplicate of Beth any different from another? But he didn't ask. Instead he shrugged, staring off into the city that waited in unconcerned welcome. He had been here many times before, but always alone. It was a good place to get lost.

By the looks of her, Summer was already lost enough - but a little more couldn't hurt.

He eyed her for a long moment, eyes narrowing in selfish contemplation before snatching his - now morosely near-empty - flask from her hands and pocketing it. "Come on. I need a drink." He rattled the barely-sloshing flask ominously, gimlet eye fixed on her peripherally as long strides carried him briskly into the glittering city. The streets had grew denser with off-world pedestrian traffic as he headed unerringly toward the urban center's heart; low him of activity drawing him to the lurid smoky light of a bar - welcoming mecca a universally recognizable beacon. But as he entered, the mostly-humanoid, aqua-skinned bartender of indeterminate gender glanced over his shoulder at Summer, scowled, and pointed streetward. "No minors."

"I'm eighteen!" "She's eighteen." Twin voices rose in simultaneous protest, but were met with stony insistence. Whatever passed for the age of majority on this planet, Summer did not meet the requirements. Thus summarily dismissed, they reemerged onto the graven sidewalk once again, a thin glimmering rain beginning to fall on the dark sleek stone of the wide street. Rick lingered under the plum-colored awning that stretched out over the bar's entryway, glaring out into the rain like a cat unwilling to wet its paws.

"Hey look," Summer pointed across the street to a set of double-doors constructed in appealing geometric patterns of frosted glass and brushed gold. The building stretched high and disappeared into the night sky above. "A hotel. Let's get a room."

Rick cast a derisive glance first at her, then at her suggestion, snorting in ridicule. "Yeah Summer, bet your parents would just _love_ that, if I- if I just took their teenage daughter to an alien motel for the night -" The rude jest fell on empty air, for his redheaded partner in crime had vanished from his side and was darting across the street.

She was already tugging on the door, which refused to open despite a noble effort. "Bet they have a bar." She commented with dry insouciance, leaning back and letting her ponytail tickle her spine as she slumped in a posture of helplessness against the uncooperative door.

Rick's mouth thinned to a narrow irritated line but she watched him crumble nonetheless. "Move." He commanded, and pressed his palm to the panel beside the door. It slid open abruptly with a hermetic hiss, and Summer stumbled inside, a blast of cool air hitting them and evaporating the rain drops that clung to their hair and clothes.

"Slick." She commented, referring to his maneuver or the hotel's decor or both, or neither.

Rick grunted and stalked across the hall to an automated concierge that may or may not have been equipped with artificial intelligence. Its personality subroutines were certainly lacking, as a red light scanned his person and Summer's languid, unconcerned figure with equivalent impunity. Deciding they presented no immediate threat to the hotel or its various assets, the machine beeped dolorously and a keycard was presented through a thin slot in the bottom.

"Great service." He said, what felt uncomfortably like a conscience snaking up his spine, wrapping around his gut, and squeezing hard. The sheer top and tiny white shorts seemed like a warning shot, now; elevated in this new environs beyond the realm of inappropriate and straight on to obscene. She looked like an escort - no, like one of the sad-smiling, hard-eyed waifs that decorated the loneliest street corners of every city on every planet. She looked like a bad decision.

Waving the card over a glowing panel beside an elevator, they entered and ascended in silence.

The room was elegant, furnished in a sleek, minimalist style that was clearly intended to appeal to the more humanoid races that frequented the planet. Halcyon 9's allure was in the mineral-rich, depolarizing magnetic density of its volcanic black crust - useless as a mining facility, the impenetrable surface proved quite useful for storing large caches of credits in underground vaults maintained by the supremely discreet and ethically flexible bankers who ran them. Despite its heavenly name, over time the planet had become a haven and playground for intergalactic weapons dealers, criminals and pimps with their diaphanous darlings demurely tucked away till the right high-roller passed through.

Rick felt right at home.

There was a locked minibar in the corner of the room, a glowing panel demanding credits before granting entrance to the thirsty traveler. It had long since ceased to surprise him, the variety and proliferation of mind-altering substances and beverages available across the galaxy. Everyone loved chasing oblivion, it seemed - and wherever he went, there he was.

Summer crossed to the locked bar and knelt, her large green eyes curious and covetous as she prodded the panel ineffectually. "How does it open?"

Rick knelt beside her, a small laser cutter in one hand. Waving her aside, he activated the device and sliced through the solid metal sealing the box shut. "Like that." He muttered, as the front of the bar, still sizzling, clunked to the floor. Reaching in with deft fingers, he snagged two bottles - one amber, one a virulent green - and dropped into the uncomfortable-looking armchair by the window, cracking the seal on the green one.

Summer bit her lip, sitting far back on her haunches away from the hot metal slab on the floor. "...Can I have one?"

Rick waved a disinterested hand, staring out the window. "Whatever you want."

Summer smiled slyly and reached into the bar's gaping maw, pulling out a slim bottle holding a liquid that was a shimmering, delicate pink. Eyeing him from the corner of his eye, to see if he was watching her - he was not - she tipped the neck of the bottle past her lips and took a deep swallow. The taste was unpleasant, a cloying flavor not unlike cinnamon, but she couldn't complain - it was far more palatable than what was in his flask.

"So now what?" She inquired, a little too brightly. He grimaced at the childish enthusiasm in her voice.

Several weeks before, when passing the laundry room on his way to his sanctuary in the garage, he had passed her while pulling clothes - mostly underthings, in varying feminine hues - mauve, salmon, coral - out of the dryer. She was wearing a snug t-shirt in an offensively candy-bright shade of orange, tiny black shorts... And his lab coat. The coat had been conscripted to the washer following a particularly nasty mishap in the lab, and was now restored to its familiar fresh-linen white, the hem brushing her thighs as she danced. Tinny music played through the headphones she had draped against her neck, and she mouthed the words - _short skirt, long jacket_  - in time with the swaying of her hips. His hands clenched and relaxed, still lingering in the doorway as he stared at her, taste of the vodka he'd been drinking bitter on his tongue and the scent of fabric softener making him queasy. He approached without a sound, and she jumped when he laid his hands on her shoulders, thumbs skating over warm skin as he slid the jacket slowly off her body. "That's mine, I think." He muttered, and shrugged it on himself. It was still warm, and smelled of her.

"Sorry," she replied in a small voice, no longer dancing. When she met his eyes, her pupils were like black holes, lips softly parted. He scowled and beat a hasty retreat.

He shouldn't have touched her. His very existence was corrosive, the danger increasing with proximity. Seemingly devoid of a guiding moral compass, he was more like a pathogen than a man - a particularly virulent virus, or an acid, eating through anything it touched. Turning everything living - in himself, in others - into so much toxic waste. And now that he had laid his hands on her, he felt that familiar gnawing ache - the desire for dissolution, stronger than he was.

Despite the laser discount he'd afforded them, the minibar could only hold so much. Summer lounged on the bed, one earbud in, her shoes off and legs crossed high as she bounced her toes to the beat only she could hear. He studied her, the small army of empty bottles beside him gaining recruits every few minutes as he returned his blood alcohol level to its natural elevated state. Reaching into the bar, he withdrew the last two bottles - one clear, and one pink. Opening one without looking, he took a swig, saccharine cinnamon coating his tongue.

"Hey," Summer protested, sitting up. "I like the pink ones." The faculties responsible for providing a cogent argument were somewhat diminished, it seemed.

"So?" He retorted, taking another sip and raising a brow at her, daring her to do something about the theft. More than a little tipsy - or maybe it was him, eating away at her already - she clambered off the bed and stumbled, landing in his lap. He held the bottle overhead, long arms keeping it easily out of her reach. Stretching up, her unbound breasts in their silky shroud very near his smirking mouth, she swiped at it and missed, the motion accompanied by a pleasing bounce.

"Give it!" She complained, squirming; and after another aborted attempt, settled into his lap. The moment her taut thighs relaxed, her body sinking into his, she stilled; her eyes snapping to his and fluttering wide. She shifted experimentally, a high nervous giggle escaping her. "...Is that your gun?"

He stared at her; a trap laid, predatory plant slowly closing its maw. It was wrong, of course. He was aware of the morality of it and not ignorant to the repercussions. He also know, of course; that it was inevitable, as all things are. She had gotten too close, as everyone did; had touched him - and now he would consume and destroy her. _Inevitable._  

He felt the moment when the last thread of reserve snapped, felt the sinking as if into a great warm welcoming oblivion. It almost tasted like freedom, almost like innocence. Almost like a lot of things.

In answer, he took a deep draught from the bottle, long throat working. Handing it to her, he watched from hooded eyes as she accepted the offering, bitten-lipped, blushing, and drank it down. There must have been some signal in the act, some pheromone released or wavelength matched that prompted him, for she had scarcely lowered the bottle when he pinched the hem of her blouse with thin fingers and dragged it smoothly over her head. It fell, floating gently, sliding from languid fingertips to the floor while she squeaked and tried to cover herself. "Grandpa _Rick!_ " High and shrill, scandalized - but a little curious, too; the little nymph waiting outside herself to see what he would do.

"Shut up." He warned her, and took her mouth. It was not a kiss - it was a demanding press, teeth and tongue demanding her submission through the most effective method available to him. Summer went boneless in his lap, small hands fluttering for a moment before gripping the lapels of his lab coat lest she shatter and fly off into the cosmos. Rough hands gripped her wrists and uncrossed her arms, holding them out from her body so he could look at her. She panted, soft curves heaving in a pretty sway that reminded him of the world when he was drunk. Her face, which had been scarlet, was now pale; she watched him warily through eyes dilated with lust and fear. "Get down." He commanded and she thought it was over, that he had changed his mind and why did the thought make her feel queasy, knees weak not with relief but anxiety and disappointment? But as she scrambled to obey he gripped her ponytail and yanked; her knees buckling as if she had been trained to expect such a maneuver. Fingers hard at the back of her neck, he pulled her forward, eye-level with the tent in his pants. _Not his gun._ But it would slay her anyway.

He opened the snap and zipper of his pants with one hand, businesslike; expression oddly detached save for the dark, thunderous _something_ in his eyes. Gripping her hair, he pressed her lips forward till they touched the gleaming tip, a parody of a kiss, and she felt hot tears welling in her eyes. "Suck it."

"...Rick," she whimpered in protest, omitting the honorific as it had done her no good. Her breath was a hot little pant against his damp skin and he growled.

"I thought I told you to shut up." He hissed, hand tightening around her ponytail. "Do it or we leave now and this never happens again."

With a soft whine, she slid her lips over his swollen head, squeezing her eyes shut and feeling her tears spill over. She was unpracticed, without technique of any kind - he'd had more stimulating experiences with his own left hand. But he gripped her hair hard, his other hand pressing beneath her jaw to extend her throat, and fucked her face; making her choke and gag with short, hard thrusts that bottomed out in the back of her throat and made her cheeks as they hollowed over his shaft wet with tears.

"Fuck yeah babygirl, you're doing great." He grunted, wiping her tears away with a swipe of his calloused thumb as long fingers massaged beneath her jaw, feeling his cock distend her throat. The unexpected praise startled a fresh wave of tears out of her and she whined, the high needy sound shooting straight up his shaft and into his balls. "Ah, fuck," He choked out, his climax blinding him, shooting hot and thick down her abused throat.

He pulled out of her mouth with a pop, hissing at the shock of cold air against his skin, and without thinking much about it he gripped the base of his cock and slapped her face with it - a firm tap, flesh against flesh, that left a smear of wetness over her cheekbone, glistening trail joining her lips to his head for a moment before she squeaked in surprise and broke the spell.

She stayed kneeling, staring as if in a daze as he tucked himself back into his pants and buttoned up. Her lips were swollen, cheeks tearstained and marked by the clear sticky swipe of cum, hair tousled from his twisting grip. Finally she looked up and met his gaze, to see he'd opened the last bottle and was drinking from it as if it would save his life.

"Is this what you wanted, Summer?" He asked, bitter and a little short of breath, stomach burning with alcohol and self-loathing. And it wasn't, not really, but it would have to do.

It would have to do.


End file.
